Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes

* 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.

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.

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

Nothing comes of severity if there be no leanings towards a change of heart. And if there be natural leanings towards a change of heart, what need for severity?

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.

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

We understand … that what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language.

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

Man is, above all, he who creates.

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

No one is ever satisfied where he is.

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

People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems... But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else... since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!... and it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh.

Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.

And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.

But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I'll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Others send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music.

Loneliness is bred of a mind that has grown earth-bound.

I showed the grown ups my maasterpiece, andI asked them if my drawing scared them. They answered why be scared of a hat? My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-- Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry." It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ." Yes, that is so," said the fox. But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince. Yes, that is so," said the fox. Then it has done you no good at all!" It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields.

What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.

To be a man is to feel that one's own stone contributes to building the edifice of the world.

Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?

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

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

Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. I take it for granted that to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. If the first act of resistance comes too late it is doomed to defeat. But it is, nevertheless, the awakening of resistance. Life may grow from it as from a seed.

What does tamed mean? It's something that's been too often neglected. It means to create ties.

What have you come to Earth for?' 'I'm having difficulties with a flower,' the little prince said. 'Ah!' said the snake. And they were both silent.

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

Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness.

People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for... They don't find it," I answered. And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..." Of course," I answered. And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.

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

What did I care about my hammer, about my bolt, about thirst or death? There was, on one star, on one planet, on mine, the Earth, a little prince to be consoled! I took him in my arms. I rocked him. I told him, 'The flower you love is not in danger...I'll draw you a muzzle for your sheep...I'll draw you a fence for your flower...I' I didn't know what to say. How clumsy I felt! I didn't know how to reach him, where to find him...It's so mysterious, the land of tears.

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.

If you want to build a boat, do not instruct the men to saw wood, stitch the sails, prepare the tools and organize the work, but make them long for setting sail and travel to distant lands.

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.

Perfection is reachednot when there's nothing to add, but when there's nothing to take away.

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

The only things you learn are the things you tame

I was wrong to grow older. Pity. I was so happy as a child.

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

A man's age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man's age represents a fine cargo of experience and memories.

I have always learned to distinguish the important from the urgent.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

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

No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.

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.

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

You know...my flower...I'm responsible for her. And she's so weak! And so naive. She has four ridiculous thorns to defend her against the world.