Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotations | Page 3

Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.

The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time.

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...

Sometimes, there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day.

Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.

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.

You know... when you are sad you love the sunsets.

Straight ahead you can't go very far.

Horror causes men to clench their fists, and in horror men join together.

Night, when words fade and things come alive.

The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me...

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

Using an artful tool does not make one a dry technician. It seems to me that people that are anxious about our technical advancement, confuse means and ends. Naturally a person that only works for material gain will not harvest something that is worth living for. But the machine is not an end in itself. The airplane is not an end. It is a tool. Just like the plough.

We live not by things, but by the meaning of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.

That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups.

"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."

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.

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

To grasp the meaning of the world of today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true natures, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language.

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

You're beautiful, but you're empty...One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose.

One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform. Accepted authority rests first of all on reason.

In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.

One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed.

When you want to build a ship, then do not drum the men together in order to procure wood, to give instructions or to distribute the work, but teach them longing for the wide endless sea.

You give birth to that on which you fix your mind

The house, the stars, the desert -- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!

The only things you learn are the things you tame

There is no hope of joy except in human relations.

* if someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows, in all the millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars.

Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the asronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “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.

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.

Sometimes we behave as though there was something more important than life. But what?

In every crowd are certain persons who seem just like the rest, yet they bear amazing messages.

We don’t ask to be eternal beings. We only ask that things do not lose all their meaning.

Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.

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

I am who I am and I have the need to be.

GOOD MORNING," said the little prince. "Good Morning," said the salesclerk. This was a salesclerk who sold pills invented to quench thirst. Swallow one a week and you no longer feel any need to drink. "Why do you sell these pills?" "They save so much time," the salesclerk said. "Experts have calculated that you can save fifty-three minutes a week." "And what do you do with those fifty-three minutes?" "Whatever you like." "If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked," the little prince said to himself, "I'd walk very slowly toward a water fountain...

…if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow

No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.

Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…” “It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake.

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful.

Of course, I love you,' the flower said to him. 'If you were not aware of it, it was my fault.

Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life... but what is that something?

There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories.

If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work; teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.

If you want to build a ship, teach the men to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

"What place would you advise me to visit now?" he asked. "The planet Earth," replied the geographer. "It has a good reputation."

To be a man is, precisely, 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 world.

Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.

But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.

Grown-ups love figures... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. 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 much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

The dignity of the individual demands that he be not reduced to vassalage by the largesse of others.

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

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.

The important thing is to strive toward a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.

The wind in the grain is the caress to the spouse; it is the hand of peace stroking her hair.

It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity.

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.

One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields - even to sadness.

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.

Real love begins where nothing is expected in return.

What value has compassion that does not take its object in its arms?

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.

It's quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. [Fr., Il est tres simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.]

We are prudent people. We are afraid to let go of our petty reality in order to grasp at a great shadow.

Experience will guide us to the rules. You cannot make rules precede practical experience.

You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.

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

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

True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.

Every person that comes into our life comes for a reason; some come to learn and others come to teach.

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you.

Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited in the night. We were waiting for the rescuing dawn - or for the Moors. Something, I know not what, lent this night a savor of Christmas. We told stories, we joked, we sang songs. In the air there was that slight fever that reigns over a gaily prepared feast. And yet we were infinitely poor. Wind, sand, and stars. The austerity of Trappists. But on this badly lighted cloth, a handful of men who possessed nothing in the world but their memories were sharing invisible riches.

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.

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

Let your dream devour your life, not your life devour your dream.

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?

She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her...

You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.

I am a fox", the fox said.

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. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you...

The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.

There is no growth except in the fulfillment of obligations.

The strong are strengthened by reverses; the trouble is that the true meaning of events scores next to nothing in the match we play with men. Appearances decide our gains or losses and the points are trumpery. And a mere semblance of defeat may hopelessly checkmate us.

The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices. It is impossible to see behind defeat, the sacrifices, the austere performance of duty, the self-discipline and the vigilance that are there - those things the god of battle does not take account of.

Flying is a man's job and its worries are a man's worries.

The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you in other mansions of his heart.

Action and personal happiness have no truck with each other; they are eternally at war.

Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated - there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.

It was the contemplation of God that created men who were equal, for it was in God that they were equal.