Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)

Quotes

• A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

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

• If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

• A goal without a plan is just a wish.

• You become responsible forever, for what you have tamed.

• Love has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

• One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one allows himself to be tamed.

• You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered.

• Language is the source of misunderstandings.

• You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.

• If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general's fault. It would be mine

• That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

• Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

• If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.

• What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

• One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.

• He who would travel happily must travel light.

• Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.

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

• Grown ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.