Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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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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There is no growth except in the fulfillment of obligations.
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I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
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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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He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound.
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We live not by things, but by the meaning of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.
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It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
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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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In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contadictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.
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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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No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.
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For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures.
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It's a question of discipline,' the little prince told me later on. 'when you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. you must be sure you pull up the baobabs regularly, as soon as you can tell them apart from the rosebushes, which they closely resemble when they're very young. It's very tedious work, but very easy.
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Ephemeral" It means 'which is in danger of speedy disappearance.
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Vain is the hope of finding pleasure in that which one has hitherto disdained; as when the warrior hopes to find pleasure in the joys of the sedentaries.
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You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water.
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There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity - for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?
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I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams.
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If you are to be, you must begin by assuming responsibility. You alone are responsible for every moment of your life, for every one of your acts.
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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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What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.
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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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People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems... But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else... since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!... and it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh.
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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?