Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes

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.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

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.

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.

Every person that comes into our life comes for a reason; some come to learn and others come to teach.

Let your dream devour your life, not your life devour your dream.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

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

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.

It's quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. [Fr., Il est tres simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.]

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

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.

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.

Night, the beloved. 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. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields - even to sadness.

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.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

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

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.

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

Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.

The Beauty of the Mountain is hidden for all those who try to discover it from the top, supposing that, one way or an other, one can reach this place directly. The Beauty of the Mountain reveals only to those who climbed it.

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.

Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity.

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

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

It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you.

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

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

Real love begins where nothing is expected in return.

The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

Attitude is a paintbrush. It colors everything!

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.

"What place would you advise me to visit now?" he asked. "The planet Earth," replied the geographer. "It has a good reputation."

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

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.

The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.

I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you.

Experience will guide us to the rules. You cannot make rules precede practical experience.

You give birth to that on which you fix your mind

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--

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.

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.

Night, when words fade and things come alive.

Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.

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.

There is no hope of joy except in human relations.