Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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"What place would you advise me to visit now?" he asked. "The planet Earth," replied the geographer. "It has a good reputation."
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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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The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.
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What sets us against one another is not our aims - they all come to the same thing - but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.
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Flying is a man's job and its worries are a man's worries.
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You're beautiful, but you're empty.... No one could die for you.
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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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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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It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
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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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Perfection is attained, not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed.
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You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
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Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.
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We must not subject him who creates to the desires of the multitude. It is, rather, his creation that must become the multitude's desire.
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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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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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What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.
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I'll look as if I'm dead, and that won't be true.' I said nothing. 'You understand. It's too far. I can't take this body with me. It's too heavy.' I said nothing. 'But it'll be like an old abandoned shell. There's nothing sad about an old shell...' I said nothing. 'It'll be nice, you know. I'll be looking at the stars, too. All the stars will be wells with a rusty pulley. All the stars will pour out water for me to drink...' I said nothing. 'And it'll be fun! You'll have five-hundred million little bells; I'll have five-hundred million springs of fresh water...' And he, too, said nothing more.
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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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Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.
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Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.
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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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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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Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.