Quotes by Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on death
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"The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices. It is impossible to see behind defeat, the sacrifices, the austere performance of duty, the self-discipline and the vigilance that are there -- those things the god of battle does not take account of."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on defeat   

"Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat. Victory is a thing of action. It is a house in the act of being built. Every participant in victory sweats and puffs, carrying the stones for the building of the house. But defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on defeat
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"The one thing that matters is the effort."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on effort
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"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on escapism   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on faith
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"Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on flirting   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on freedom
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"On a day of burial there is no perspective -- for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was -- to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on funerals   

"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on giving
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"When you give yourself, you receive more than you give."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on giving
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"The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on airplane and aviation   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on happiness   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on happiness   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on fellowship   

"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on humankind
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"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on ideas
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"What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. 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?"

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on liberty   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on life
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"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on love
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"Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on love
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"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on machinery   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on life
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"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on night
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"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on perfection   

"How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become -- to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on purpose   

"To be a man is to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on responsibility
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"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on sacrifice   

"Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?"

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on belief   

"What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on body   

"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on charity   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on unknown   

"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on war   

"More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on wisdom   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on action   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on civilization
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"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on civilization   

"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."

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on communication   

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De on