Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Biography : French writer, poet, journalist and aviator.
Born: 1900 - Died: 1944
Period:
20th century
Place of birth: France
France

France

Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Quotes

All grown-ups were once children (but only few of them remember it).
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince /

child

All grown-ups were once children (but only few of them remember it).

As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Citadelle /

future

A smile is often the most essential thing. One is repaid by a smile. One is rewarded by a smile. One is animated by a smile.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

smile

Intelligence has value only in the service of love.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

heart

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

Background photo by Bolun Yan on Unsplash

Language is a source of misunderstanding.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince /

Language

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince /

It is spirit that rules the world, not intelligence.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

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

It seems that perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

perfection

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

war

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

love

We are of our childhood as we are from a country.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

childhood

When we work for material ends alone, we build ourselves our own prison.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Wind, Sand and Stars /

work

The earth teaches us more about ourselves than all the books in the world, because it is resistant to us. Self-discovery comes when man measures himself against an obstacle.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Wind, Sand and Stars /

To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

Order does not create life.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery /

I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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

the unknown

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

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

life

The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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-Exupery /

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.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

love

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

responsibility

Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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

truth

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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-Exupery

Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery