135 Inspiring Quotes by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.

The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you in other mansions of his heart.

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

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

The arms of love encompass you with your present, your past, your future, the arms of love gather you together.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

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

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

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

The soldier's body becomes a stock of accessories that are not his property.

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

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

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

But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.

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.

But games always cover something deep and intense, else there would be no excitement in them, no pleasure, no power to stir us.

Friendship is born from an identity of spiritual goals -- from common navigation toward a star.

It is the duty of the ship's captain to make port, cost what it may.

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.

We are forever responsible for that which we have tamed.

I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed.

What does tamed mean? It's something that's been too often neglected. It means to create ties.

You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.

If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.

Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.

Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.

Only the children know what they are looking for.

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

To become a man is to be responsible; to be ashamed of miseries that you did not cause.

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.

I shall never again admire a merely brave man.

Once we are bound together to our brothers by a common good that is outside us, then we can breathe. Experience teaches us that love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak.

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.

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

It is not for us to forecast the future, but to shape it.

Peace dies when the framework is ripped apart. When there is no longer a place that is yours in the world. When you know no longer where your friend is to be found.

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

Nothing can match the treasure of common memories.

You cannot plant an acorn in the morning, and expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.

The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful.

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 night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the starts.

Truths may clash without contradicting each other.

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

Real love begins where nothing is expected in return.

If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.

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

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 remembered even the misery with tenderness.

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.

I don't believe you! Flowers are weak creatures. They are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons.

There is no hope of joy except in human relations.

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

Action and personal happiness have no truck with each other; they are eternally at war.

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

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

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

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.

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

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

Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness.

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

He who must travel happily must travel light.

What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute.

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

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

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.

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

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

You're not a man, you're a mushroom!

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.

For there is but one problem -- the problem of human relations. We forget that there is no hope or joy except in human relations.

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

Attitude is a paintbrush. It colors everything!

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

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

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.

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?

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.

True, it is evil that a single man should crush the herd, but see not there the worse form of slavery, which is when the herd crushes out the man.

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.

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.

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.

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

He who never says no is no true man.

The strong are strengthened by reverses; the trouble is that the true meaning of events scores next to nothing in the match we play with men. Appearances decide our gains or losses and the points are trumpery. And a mere semblance of defeat may hopelessly checkmate us.

You know... when you are sad you love the sunsets.

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

Night, when words fade and things come alive.

Look at the sky. Ask yourselves: Has the sheep eaten the flower, yes or no? And you will see how everything changes.

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.

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

If you are to be, you must begin by assuming responsibility. You alone are responsible for every moment of your life, for every one of your acts.

We are prudent people. We are afraid to let go of our petty reality in order to grasp at a great shadow.

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

You do not explain the tree by telling of the water it has drunk, the minerals it has absorbed, and the sunlight that strengthened it.

I will appoint captains to rule my cities, for it is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

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.

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

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.

A man's age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.

Perhaps creativity is fumbling that dance step, or driving the chisel the wrong way into the stone.

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

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.

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

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.

It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity.

Men have forgotten this truth, said the fox. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

A smile is often the key thing.One is paid with a smile. One is rewarded with a smile. One is brightened by a smile. And the quality of a smile can make one die.

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

Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.

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

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

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

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

Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?

Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

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.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

The one thing that matters is the effort.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

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