Aviator Quotes

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.

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.

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten,' he does not say 'My men were beaten.'

We are forever responsible for that which we have tamed.

Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas.

When we think that the machine will harm man, then it is perhaps because we are not yet capable of judging the rapid changes it has brought about. We hardly feel at home in this landscape of mines and power stations. We have just moved into this new home that we have not even finished yet. Everything around us has changed so fast - personal relations, working conditions, habits. Even our state of mind is in turmoil.

He who must travel happily must travel light.

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

An administration, like a machine, does not create. It carries on.

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.

He who bears in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious. He who seeks to become sexton of a finished cathedral is already defeated.

True love is visible not to the eyes but to the heart, for eyes may be deceived.

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

You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me.

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.

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures-in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.

Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.

To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend.

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.

There is no hope of joy except in human relations.

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.

He sat down. I sat down next to him. And after a silence, he spoke again. 'The stars are beautiful because of a flower you don't see...' I answered, 'Yes, of course.

When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.

When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.

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.

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.

Trying to be witty leads to lying, more or less.

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.

The house, the stars, the desert -- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!

Using an artful tool does not make one a dry technician. It seems to me that people that are anxious about our technical advancement, confuse means and ends. Naturally a person that only works for material gain will not harvest something that is worth living for. But the machine is not an end in itself. The airplane is not an end. It is a tool. Just like the plough.

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.

For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers.

I was too young to know how to love her.

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

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

It is not a question of living dangerously. That formula is too arrogant, too presumptuous. I don't care much for bull-fighters. It's not the danger I love. I know what I love. It is life itself.

Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but - you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity.

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.

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

Truths may clash without contradicting each other.

At one time I say to myself: "Surely not! The little prince shuts his flower under her glass globe every night, and he watches over his sheep very carefully . . ." Then I am happy. And there is sweetness in the laughter of all the stars.

The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

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

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

Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated - there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

To love is not to look at one another: it is to look, together, in the same direction.

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?

You'll be bothered from time to time by storms, fog, snow. When you are, think of those who went through it before you, and say to yourself, 'What they could do, I can do.'

If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general's fault. It would be mine.

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.

When one is building a ship, one does not begin with gathering timber and cutting planks, but rather by arousing in people the yearning for the great wide sea.

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

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

Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat. Victory is a thing of action. It is a house in the act of being built. Every participant in victory sweats and puffs, carrying the stones for the building of the house. But defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility.

Perfection is attained, not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed.