Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes

The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried.

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.

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

To become a man is to be responsible; to be ashamed of miseries that you did not cause.

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

But the conceited man did not hear him. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.

And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry..." "They are lucky," the switchman said.

Grown ups are certainly very strange.

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.

For instance, if you come at four in the afternoon, I'll begin to be happy by three. The closer it gets to four, the happier I'll feel. By four I'll be excited and worried; I'll discover what it costs to be happy! But if you come at any od time, I'll never know when I should prepare my heart... There must be rites.

I wonder," he said, "whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again.

Look at the sky. Ask yourselves: Has the sheep eaten the flower, yes or no? And you will see how everything changes.

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?

Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man.

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

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.

But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.

If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.

Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers.

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

You cannot plant an acorn in the morning, and expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.

Vain is the hope of finding pleasure in that which one has hitherto disdained; as when the warrior hopes to find pleasure in the joys of the sedentaries.

Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison.

He who never says "no" is no true man.

Even though human life may be the most precious thing on earth, we always behave as if there were something of higher value than human life.

You become responsible for a long time for what you've tamed.

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

Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree.

Intelligence is not creative; judgment is not creative. If a sculptor is nothing but skill and mind, his hands will be without genius.

One day, I watched the sun setting forty-four times......You know...when one is so terribly sad, one loves sunsets.

When you tame someone they become unique to you in all the world

Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.

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

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.

The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them in particular caused by what we compare it to: something worse and we feel grateful for what we have; something better and we feel somehow let down.

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

All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.

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

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

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.

Once we are bound together to our brothers by a common good that is outside us, then we can breathe. Experience teaches us that love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak.

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

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.

Truths may clash without contradicting each other.

He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound.

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