Antoine De Saint-Exupery Quotes

#1. ...In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#2. You'll be bothered from time to time by storms, fog, snow. When you are, think to yourself, 'What they could do, I can do.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#3. What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a down spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#4. Where I live, everything is very small.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#5. When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond
myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#6. I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#7. Grown-ups love figures. When you talk to them about a new friend, they never ask questions about essential matters.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#8. Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would rise up in revolution.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#10. It's good to have a friend. Even if you're going to die.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#11. ...misunderstood and forgotten, you have great truths within you if only anyone would bother to look.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#12. All the stars are a riot of flowers.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#13. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#14. The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#15. You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#16. The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#17. No one is ever satisfied where he is.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#18. You're beautiful, but you're empty. No one could die for you.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#19. That is the most difficult thing of all. It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself correctly, then you are truly a man of wisdom.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#20. 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.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#21. If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?' the king demanded. 'The general, or myself?

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#22. Man is, above all, he who creates.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#23. Flying is a man's job and its worries are a man's worries.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#24. Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#26. Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#27. But the conceited man did not hear him. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#28. A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#29. It's so mysterious, the land of tears.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#30. 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.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#32. If one let's oneself be tamed, one runs the risk of weeping.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#33. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#34. The truth for a man, it's what makes him a man.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#35. If you come at four in the afternoon, I'll begin to be happy by three.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#36. We live not by things, but by the meaning of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#37. It's hard luck always having to be a judge.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#38. 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 ...

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#39. When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wander a little from the truth.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#40. I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#41. The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#42. If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#43. Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all futility.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#45. The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#46. One nation is weakened by a victory, another finds new forces in defeat

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#47. For it is possible for a man to be faithful and lazy at the same time.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#48. I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#49. Go and have another look at the roses. And you will understand that yours is indeed unique in all the world.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#50. I need to put up with two or three caterpillars if I want to get to know the butterflies. Apparently they're very beautiful.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#51. Treason implies responsibility for something, control over something, influence upon something, knowledge of something. Treason in our time is a proof of genius. Why, I want to know, are not traitors decorated?

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#52. To live is to be slowly born.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#53. We must only demand that which each individual can give," said the king. "The authority rests first on reason.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#54. If Someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#55. One cannot build life from refrigerators, politics, credit statements and crossword puzzles. That is impossible. Nor can one exist for any length of time without poetry, without color, without love.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#56. To grasp the meaning of the world of today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true natures, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#57. It is of some use to my volcanoes, and it is of some use to my flower, that I own them. But you are of no use to the stars ...

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#58. To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#59. A goal without a pan is just a wish.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#60. They buy things in ready-made stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#61. He did not know how the world is simplified for kings. To them, all men are subjects.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#62. The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#63. The course of a man's destiny can seem sharply altered by a sudden illumination. But illumination is no more than the Spirit's sudden vision of a road that is long prepared. Gradually I learned grammar. I practiced syntax. My feelings were awakened. Then a poem suddenly blazed in my heart.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#64. And I love to listen to the stars at night. It is like listening to five hundred million little bells ...

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#65. 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.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#68. How do we tell the difference between an image and an act of will?

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#69. Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself and who had need for a friend.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#70. A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#71. Children understand.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#72. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#73. One must observe the proper rites.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#74. Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#75. My footfall rang in a universe that was not theirs.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#76. I should tolerate the closeness of 2-3 caterpillars, if I want to get to know butterflies

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#77. And were you very, very sad on the day you watched fourty-four sunsets?

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#78. Authority is first and foremost based on reason.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#79. The squall has ceased to be a cause of my complaint. The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when the night has fallen, I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#80. There is no hope of joy except in human relations.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#81. But I made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#82. Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than iteself.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#83. One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#84. Children should show great understanding towards grown-ups

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#85. Language is the source of misunderstandings.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#86. I may be a little like the grown-ups. I must have grown old.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#87. You know, I used to sweat sometimes when I was digging. My rheumatism would pull at my leg, and I would damn myself for a slave. And now, do you know, I'd like to spade and spade. It's beautiful work. A man is free when he is using a spade. And besides, who is going to prune my trees when I am gone?

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#88. You give birth to that on which you fix your mind

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#89. Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#90. Truths may clash without contradicting each other.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#91. But, of course, for those of us who understand life, we would not care less about figures.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#93. As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#94. Horror causes men to clench their fists, and in horror men join together.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#95. I wonder," he said, "whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again ...

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#96. One cannot live any longer on refrigerators, on politics, on balance-sheets and cross-word puzzles. One cannot live any longer without poetry, colour and love.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#97. 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.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#98. He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound..

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#99. I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower ... I think that she has tamed me ...

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#100. No one has tamed you and you haven't tamed anyone.Your'e the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I've made him my friend, and now he's the only fox in the world.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery