Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes

“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?”

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

“You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water.”

“Good taste" is a virtue of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens.”

“You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”

“The one thing that matters is the effort.”

“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.”

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

“Cries of despair, misery, sobbing grief are a kind of wealth.”

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

“I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings." -from the Fox-”

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

“It's useful because it's beautiful.”

“In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contadictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.”

“Make your life a dream, and a dream a reality.”

“Straight ahead you can't go very far.”

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

“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.”

“You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.”

“A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.”

“He had taken seriously words which were without importance, and it made him very unhappy.”

“Truth is not that which is demonstrable but that which is ineluctable.”

“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.”

“If you tame me, it would be as if the sun came to shine on my life.”

“I am a fox", the fox said.”