Top 250 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes (2023 Update)
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151. “He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

152. “And at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells...”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

153. “The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

154. “Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

155. “Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

156. “But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

157. “For there is but one problem – the problem of human relations. We forget that there is no hope or joy except in human relations.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

158. “Night, when words fade and things come alive.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

159. “True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

160. “The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you in other mansions of his heart.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

161. “You’re not a man, you’re a mushroom!”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

162. “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-Exupéry

163. “War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

164. “All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming – a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

165. “Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

166. “The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

167. “I saw the sunset forty-four times!”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

168. “They never say to you, ‘What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?’ Instead, they demand ‘How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much money does his father make?’ Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

169. “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

170. “There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

171. “It is as a soldier that you make love and as a lover that you make war.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

172. “Experience will guide us to the rules. You cannot make rules precede practical experience.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

173. “Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, which is to be what one is and no other.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

174. “For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

175. “It is the missed opportunity that counts, and in a love that vainly yearns from behind prison bars you have perchance the love supreme.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

176. “When you tame someone they become unique to you in all the world.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

177. “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.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

179. “Man’s progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

180. “Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

181. “One’s suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields – even to sadness.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

182. “The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the starts.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

183. “I was wrong to grow older. Pity. I was so happy as a child.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

184. “Man is, above all, he who creates.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

185. “Vain is the hope of finding pleasure in that which one has hitherto disdained; as when the warrior hopes to find pleasure in the joys of the sedentaries.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

186. “Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than iteself.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

187. “One must observe the proper rites.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

188. “When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wander a little from the truth.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

189. “He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound...”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

190. “I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

191. “When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

192. “If Someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

193. “It’s useful because it’s beautiful.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

194. “The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen... The desert is beautiful,” the little prince added. And that was true. 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... “What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well... ” I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

195. “Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but – you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

196. “I believe that for his escape he took advantage of the migration of a flock of wild birds.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

197. “The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

198. “Only the children know what they are looking for. They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry...”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

199. “The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground. And the pure logician, if no sun draws him forth, remains entangled in his logic.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

200. “I don’t believe you! Flowers are weak creatures. They are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons...”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry