Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes

“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.”

“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”

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

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

“I will appoint captains to rule my cities, for it is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.”

“Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.”

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

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

“In order to cure a feeling of malaise, you have to throw light on it.”

“I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed.”

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

“How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.What is true is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that one can see clearly.”

“I was too young to know how to love her.”

“I don't understand these people anymore, that travel the commuter-trains to their dormitory towns. These people that call themselves human, but, by a pressure they do not feel, are forced to do their work like ants. With what do they fill their time when they are free of work on their silly little Sundays? I am very fortunate in my profession. I feel like a farmer, with the airstrips as my fields. Those that have once tasted this kind of fare will not forget it ever. Not so, my friends?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“To live is to be slowly born.”

“Perhaps creativity is fumbling that dance step, or driving the chisel the wrong way into the stone.”

“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.”

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

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

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”