Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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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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"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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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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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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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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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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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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It is the savor of bread broken with comrades that makes us accept the values of war.
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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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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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It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
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Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.
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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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You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
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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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Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.
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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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The one thing that matters is the effort. It continues, whereas the end to be attained is but an illusion of the climber, as he fares on and on from crest to crest; and once the goal is reached it has no meaning.
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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.
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Nothing comes of severity if there be no leanings towards a change of heart. And if there be natural leanings towards a change of heart, what need for severity?