A biography for Antoine de Saint-Exuperyhasn’t been written yet.
“He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.”
“Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.”
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
“A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten', he does not say 'My men were beaten.'”
“Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.”
“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.”
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.”
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.”
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
“When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.”
“The one thing that matters is the effort.”
“Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”
“The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.”
“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.”
“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.”