Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes

“One must observe the proper rites.”

“A goal without a pan is just a wish.”

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

“And that heart which was a wild garden was given to him who only loved trim lawns. And the imbecile carried the princess into slavery.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Why are you drinking? demanded the little prince. "So that I may forget," replied the tippler. "Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who was already sorry for him. "Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head. "Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him. "Ashamed of drinking!”

“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?”

“A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.”

“No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.”

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

“You give birth to that on which you fix your mind”

“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.”

“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.”