Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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When you want to build a ship, then do not drum the men together in order to procure wood, to give instructions or to distribute the work, but teach them longing for the wide endless sea.
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The Beauty of the Mountain is hidden for all those who try to discover it from the top, supposing that, one way or an other, one can reach this place directly. The Beauty of the Mountain reveals only to those who climbed it.
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A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten,' he does not say 'My men were beaten.'
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She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might snare him in a fragile net of music, love and flowers, but, at each departure, he would break forth without, it seemed to her, the least regret.
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We live not by things, but by the meaning of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.
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War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
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One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform. Accepted authority rests first of all on reason.
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When you tame someone they become unique to you in all the world
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All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--
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Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.
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A man's age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.
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We are all youthful barbarians, and only our new toys bring us excitement. That has been the sole purpose of our flights. This one flies higher, that one faster. But now we will make ourselves at home. We will forget the machine, the tool. It is no longer complex; it does what it is supposed to do, unnoticed. And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet.
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Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all futility.
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if a sheep eats bushes does it eat flowers too? a sheep eats whatever it finds even a flower with thorn? even a flower with thorns. then what's the good of thorns?
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What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.
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The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
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You're beautiful, but you're empty.... No one could die for you.
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Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
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But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.
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Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.
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Experience will guide us to the rules. You cannot make rules precede practical experience.
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True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
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Good taste" is a virtue of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens.
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The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time.
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Nothing comes of severity if there be no leanings towards a change of heart. And if there be natural leanings towards a change of heart, what need for severity?
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But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.
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We don’t ask to be eternal beings. We only ask that things do not lose all their meaning.
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Ephemeral" It means 'which is in danger of speedy disappearance.
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I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams.
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Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life... but what is that something?
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