Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes

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

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

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.

To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.

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

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

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

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

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

I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.

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

Man's progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning.

He who must travel happily must travel light.

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.

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

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

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction

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

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

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

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

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

There is no hope of joy except in human relations.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step

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

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

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

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

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.

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

There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.