Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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Man's progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning.
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He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound.
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But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.
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A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.
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I don't understand these people anymore, that travel the commuter-trains to their dormitory towns. These people that call themselves human, but, by a pressure they do not feel, are forced to do their work like ants. With what do they fill their time when they are free of work on their silly little Sundays? I am very fortunate in my profession. I feel like a farmer, with the airstrips as my fields. Those that have once tasted this kind of fare will not forget it ever. Not so, my friends?
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A goal without a pan is just a wish.
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We are all youthful barbarians, and only our new toys bring us excitement. That has been the sole purpose of our flights. This one flies higher, that one faster. But now we will make ourselves at home. We will forget the machine, the tool. It is no longer complex; it does what it is supposed to do, unnoticed. And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet.
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The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
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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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No one has tamed you and you haven't tamed anyone.Your'e the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I've made him my friend, and now he's the only fox in the world.
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I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: 'I am busy with matters of consequence!' And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man - he is a mushroom!
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When someone blushes, doesn't that mean 'yes'?
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Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
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I am a fox", the fox said.
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One cannot build life from refrigerators, politics, credit statements and crossword puzzles. That is impossible. Nor can one exist for any length of time without poetry, without color, without love.
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And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.
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Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity.
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The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.
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The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song?
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I have always learned to distinguish the important from the urgent.
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One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.
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A smile is often the key thing.One is paid with a smile. One is rewarded with a smile. One is brightened by a smile. And the quality of a smile can make one die.
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If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.
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The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful.