Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
-
Man's progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning.
-
People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for... They don't find it," I answered. And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..." Of course," I answered. And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.
-
I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.
-
The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful.
-
I still fall for your everyday.
-
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.
-
Ephemeral" It means 'which is in danger of speedy disappearance.
-
We don’t ask to be eternal beings. We only ask that things do not lose all their meaning.
-
Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.
-
He who bears in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious. He who seeks to become sexton of a finished cathedral is already defeated.
-
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?
-
If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.
-
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?
-
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.
-
At one time I say to myself: "Surely not! The little prince shuts his flower under her glass globe every night, and he watches over his sheep very carefully . . ." Then I am happy. And there is sweetness in the laughter of all the stars.
-
I shall never again admire a merely brave man.
-
And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.
-
One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.
-
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!
-
I am a fox", the fox said.
-
All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.
-
To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend.
-
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.
-
Perfection is reachednot when there's nothing to add, but when there's nothing to take away.