Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes

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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
A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
And it was at that moment that you pronounced your first intelligible sentence, a speech admirable in its human pride: "I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. I take it for granted that to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. If the first act of resistance comes too late it is doomed to defeat. But it is, nevertheless, the awakening of resistance. Life may grow from it as from a seed.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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 astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

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
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In giving, you throw a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.

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
The essential, most often, has no weight. The essential there, was apparently nothing but a smile. A smile is often the essential. One is paid with a smile. One is rewarded by a smile. And the quality of a smile might make one die.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
How does life construct those lines of force which make us alive?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Real miracles make little noise! Essential events are so simple!

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Lisbon seemed like a sort of bright, wistful paradise...

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In a civil war the firing line is invisible, it passes through the hearts of men.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.

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

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
The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight, put your mind on the strategy of the fight, and you will not feel the other fellow's punches.

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

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry