Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree.
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A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.
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She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might snare him in a fragile net of music, love and flowers, but, at each departure, he would break forth without, it seemed to her, the least regret.
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Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.
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Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness.
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I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.
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The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground. And the pure logician, if no sun draws him forth, remains entangled in his logic.
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Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.
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Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
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Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
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You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
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One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.
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What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute.
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To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
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Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.
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We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.
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Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.
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And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry..." "They are lucky," the switchman said.
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You do not explain the tree by telling of the water it has drunk, the minerals it has absorbed, and the sunlight that strengthened it.
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Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.
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The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.
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When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.
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True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
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No individual is isolated. He who is sad, saddens others.