Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was an aristocrat French writer, poet and pioneering aviator who died after being lost in flight over the Mediterranean during World War II. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Award. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.
Some of his great quotes include the following:
A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
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.
Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.
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.
He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
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.
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.
I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
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.
It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
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.
Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.
The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.
The one thing that matters is the effort.
The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
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.
What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.
When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
