Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes

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

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Here is my secret. It is very simple. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude toward them.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground. And the pure logician, if no sun draws him forth, remains entangled in his logic.

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

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
For you live not by things, but by the meaning of things.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity - for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
To be a man is to be responsible: to be ashamed of miseries you did not cause; to be proud of your comrades' victories; to be aware, when setting one stone, that you are building a world.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
He who bears in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says, 'I was beaten.' He does not say, 'My men were beaten.'

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What makes the desert beautiful is that it hides, somewhere, a well.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life.... But what is that something?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry