Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes (143 Quotes)

Trying to be witty leads to lying, more or less.

I believe that for his escape he took advantage of the migration of a flock of wild birds.

No one is ever satisfied where he is.

Vain men never hear anything but praise.

I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.

Now here is my secret, very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.

Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is, If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

There is no growth except in the fulfillment of obligations

Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

It is much more difficult to judge oneself, than to judge others.

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

The one thing that matters is the effort.

When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.

Man is but a network of relationships and these alone matter to him.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend.

When it comes to the future, our task is not to foresee it, but rather to enable it to happen.

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures-in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Let a man in a garret but burn with enough tensity and he will set fire to the whole world.

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.

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.

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.

When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wanders a little from the truth.

Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?

A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out

They never say to you, 'What does his voice sound like What games does he love best Does he collect butterflies' Instead, they demand 'How old is he How many brothers has he How much does he weigh How much money does his father make' Only from

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.

You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.

We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

Neither intelligence nor judgment are creative. If a sculptor is nothing but science and intelligence his hands will have no talent.

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

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.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.

Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.

To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.

You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses because it is she that I have watered.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

The greatness of a craft consists firstly in how it brings comradeship to men.

The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them

It is as a soldier that you make love and as a lover that you make war

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.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.