Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

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

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Treason implies responsibility for something, control over something, influence upon something, knowledge of something. Treason in our time is a proof of genius. Why, I want to know, are not traitors decorated?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Flowers are weak creatures. They are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A child is not frightened at the thought of being patiently transmuted into an old man.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
To give you an idea of the size of the Earth, I will tell you that before the invention of electricity it was necessary to maintain, over the whole of the six continents, a veritable army of 462,511 lamplighters for the street lamps.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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-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
So you, too, come from the sky! Which is your planet?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
An administration, like a machine, does not create. It carries on.

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

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

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The dignity of the individual demands that he be not reduced to vassalage by the largess of others.

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

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

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

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If you want to understand the meaning of happiness, you must see it as a reward and not as a goal.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A man's age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.

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
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
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.

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

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

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