Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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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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It is not a question of living dangerously. That formula is too arrogant, too presumptuous. I don't care much for bull-fighters. It's not the danger I love. I know what I love. It is life itself.
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How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
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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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True, it is evil that a single man should crush the herd, but see not there the worse form of slavery, which is when the herd crushes out the man.
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A man's age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.
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Charity never humiliated him who profited from it, nor ever bound him by the chains of gratitude, since it was not to him but to God that the gift was made.
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If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!
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When one is building a ship, one does not begin with gathering timber and cutting planks, but rather by arousing in people the yearning for the great wide sea.
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Peace dies when the framework is ripped apart. When there is no longer a place that is yours in the world. When you know no longer where your friend is to be found.
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In every crowd are certain persons who seem just like the rest, yet they bear amazing messages.
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A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.
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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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Truth is not that which is demonstrable but that which is ineluctable.
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A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out.
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Man is, above all, he who creates.
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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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Of course, I love you,' the flower said to him. 'If you were not aware of it, it was my fault.
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The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
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You cannot plant an acorn in the morning, and expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.
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The first stars tremble as if shimmering in green water. Hours must pass before their glimmer hardens into the frozen glitter of diamonds. I shall have a long wait before I witness the soundless frolic of the shooting stars. In the profound darkness of certain nights I have seen the sky streaked with so many trailing sparks that it seemed to me a great gale must be blowing through the outer heavens.
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If some one loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, "My flower's up there somewhere. . . ." But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?
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When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.
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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.