Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes (143 Quotes)

Love does not cause suffering what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite

Man's progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.

How could drops of water know themselves to be a river Yet the river flows on.

Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, which is to be what one is and no other.

Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.

But games always cover something deep and intense, else there would be no excitement in them, no pleasure, no power to stir us.

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.

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.

The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

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.

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

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.

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

To be a man is to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the

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

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says "I was beaten," he does not say "My men were beaten".

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.

Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.

A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.

There is no hope of joy except in human relations.

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

When you've finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care

But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart...

The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.

What do we mean by setting a man free You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute.

Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself

The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.

One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.

As for the Future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it.

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.

There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.