Antoine De Saint-Exupery Quotes & Sayings

Where I live, everything is very small. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I'll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Others send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.
What matters most are the simple pleasures so abundant that we can all enjoy them ... Happiness doesn't lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

For I do not want my book to be read carelessly. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows, in all the millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

To forget a friend is sad. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Of course I love you. It is my fault that you have not known it all the while (the flower to little prince) — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

One day I saw the sun set forty-four times!' And a little later you added, 'You know, when you're feeling very sad, sunsets are wonderful ... '
'On the day of the forty-four times, were you feeling very sad?'
But the little prince didn't answer. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

On a day of burial there is no perspective
for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was
to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Childhood is another country but also a waiting-room, a state of accommodation and acceptance. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The flower coughed. But it was not because she had a cold — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Of course, I love you,' the flower said to him. 'If you were not aware of it, it was my fault. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Inside the narrow skull of the miner pinned beneath the fallen timber, there lives a world. Parents, friends, a home, the hot soup of evening, songs sung on feast days, loving kindness and anger, perhaps even a social consciousness and a great universal love, inhabit that skull. By what are we to measure the value of a man? His ancestor once drew a reindeer on the wall of a cave; and two hundred thousand years later that gesture still radiates. It stirs us, prolongs itself in us. Man's gestures are an eternal spring. Though we [may] die for it, we shall bring up that miner from his shaft. Solitary he may be, universal he surely is. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

We are living through deeply anxious days and if we are to relieve our own anxiety we must diagnose its cause — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

One must look with the heart. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

A man's age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man's age represents a fine cargo of experience and memories. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I was sad, but I told them: "I am tired. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world
- the little prince — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It is a matter of life and death for us; for the lead we gain by day on ships and railways is lost each night. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

And I knew that I could not bear the thought of never hearing that laughter any more. For me, it was like a spring of fresh water in the desert. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

... if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world ... if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Cries of despair, misery, sobbing grief are a kind of wealth. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

But you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Love consists of not looking each other in the eye, but of looking outwardly in the same direction. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The wind in the grain is the caress to the spouse; it is the hand of peace stroking her hair. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

In my mind's eye I can still see the first night flight I made in Argentina. It was pitch-dark. Yet in the black void, I could see the lights of man shining down below on the plains, like faintly luminous earthbound stars. Each star was a beacon signaling the presence of a human mind. Here a man was meditating on human happiness, perhaps, or on justice or peace. Lost among this flock of stars was the star of some solitary shepherd. There, perhaps, a man was in communication with the heavens, as he labored over his calculations of the nebula of Andromeda. And there, a pair of lovers. These fires were burning all over the countryside, and each of them, aven the most humble, had to be fed. The fire of the poet, of the teacher, of the carpenter. But among all these living fires, how many closed windows there were, how many dead stars, fires that gave off no light for lack of nourishment. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You only understand the things that you tame, — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

When you give yourself, you receive more than you give. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

What makes a desert so beautiful is that it hides a well somewhere ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Grown ups are certainly very strange. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

You are beautiful, but you are empty", he went on. "One could not die for you. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You know ... my flower ... I'm responsible for her. And she's so weak! And so naive. She has four ridiculous thorns to defend her against the world ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them ... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night ... You - only you - will have stars that can laugh. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"
And a little later you added:
"You know
one loves the sunset, when one is so sad ... "
"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"
But the little prince made no reply. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

When you find a diamond that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you discover an island that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you get an idea before any one else, you take out a patent on it : it is yours. So with me : I own the stars, because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

And yet he's the only person I don't find ridiculous. Maybe it's because he's looking after something other than himself. He — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It's all a great mystery ... Look up at the sky and you'll see how everything changes — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near
Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you ... "
Yes, that is so," said the fox.
But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
Yes, that is so," said the fox.
Then it has done you no good at all!"
It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I will make you a present of a secret. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You
you alone
will have the stars as no one else has them
— Antoine De Saint-Exupery

All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remember even the misery with tenderness. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The essential is invisible to eyes — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It is a good thing to have had a friend, even if one is about to die. I, for instance, am very glad to have had a fox as a friend . — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Language is the source of misunderstandings. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Tomorrow's truth grows out of yesterday's error. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The fox is answering the Little Prince's question. What does that mean ... tame? asks the Little Prince. It
means to establish ties. One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything, they buy things all ready made at the shops, but there is no shop anywhere one can buy friendship. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

If I am attempting to describe him, it is in order not to forget him. It is sad to forget a friend. Not every one has had a friend. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

That's right' said the fox. 'To me, you are still just a little boy like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. To you, I am just a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we shall need one another,. To me, you will be unique. And I shall be unique to you. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

But the vain man did not hear him. Vain men never hear anything but praise. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You're beautiful, but you're empty ... One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

His work has some meaning. When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

He never answered questions
but when one flushes does that not mean "Yes"? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

He who must travel happily must travel light. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Man's progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

How is it possible for one to own the stars?"
"To whom do they belong?" the businessman retorted, peevishly.
"I don't know. To nobody. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Men," said the little prince, "set out on their way in express trains, but they do not know what they are looking for. Then they rush about, and get excited, and turn round and round ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You understand. It's too far. I can't take this body when me. It's too heavy"
I said nothing.
"But it will be like an abandoned shell. There's nothing sad about an old shell ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Of course I'll hurt you. Of course you'll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. she perfumed my planet and lit up my life. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You, Bedouin of Libya who saved our lives, though you will dwell forever in my memory yet I shall never be able to recapture your features. You are Humanity and your face comes into my mind simply as man incarnate. You, our beloved fellowman, did not know who we might be, and yet you recognized us without fail. And I, in my turn, shall recognize you in the faces of all mankind. You came towards me in an aureole of charity and magnanimity bearing the gift of water. All my friends and all my enemies marched towards me in your person. It did not seem to me that you were rescuing me: rather did it seem that you were forgiving me. And I felt I had no enemy left in all the world. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

Every person that comes into our life comes for a reason; some come to learn and others come to teach. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all futility. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen ... The desert is beautiful," the little prince added. And that was true. 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 ... "What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well ... " I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. I take it for granted that to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. If the first act of resistance comes too late it is doomed to defeat. But it is, nevertheless, the awakening of resistance. Life may grow from it as from a seed. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Somewhere along the way we have gone astray. The human anthill is richer than ever before. We have more wealth and more leisure, and yet we lack something essential, which we find it difficult to describe. We feel less human; somewhere we have lost our mysterious prerogatives. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The little prince, who was present at the first appearance of a huge bud, felt
at once that some sort of miraculous apparition must emerge from it. But
the flower was not satisfied to complete the preparations for her beauty in the
shelter of her green chamber. She chose her colours with the greatest care. She
adjusted her petals one by one. She did not wish to go out into the world all
rumpled, like the field poppies. It was only in the full radiance of her beauty
that she wished to appear. Oh, yes! She was a coquettish creature! And her
mysterious adornment lasted for days and days. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Even though human life may be the most precious thing on earth, we always behave as if there were something of higher value than human life. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery