Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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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 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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On a day of burial there is no perspective--for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was--to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.
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Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
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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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What have you come to Earth for?' 'I'm having difficulties with a flower,' the little prince said. 'Ah!' said the snake. And they were both silent.
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No individual is isolated. He who is sad, saddens others.
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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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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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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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You're beautiful, but you're empty.... No one could die for you.
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Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but - you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity.
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A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
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My senses of space, of distance, and of direction entirely vanished. When I looked for the ground I sometimes looked down, sometimes up, sometimes left, sometimes right. I thought I was very high up when I would suddenly be thown to earth in a near vertical spin. I thought I was very low to the ground and I was pulled up to 3,000 feet in two minutes by the 500-horsepower motor. It danced, it pushed, it tossed. . . . Ah! la la!
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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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Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.
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I showed the grown ups my masterpiece, andI asked them if my drawing scared them. They answered why be scared of a hat? My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
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On ne sait jamais! One never knows!
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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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Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.
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You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
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If you want to build a boat, do not instruct the men to saw wood, stitch the sails, prepare the tools and organize the work, but make them long for setting sail and travel to distant lands.
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When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.