Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.

Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten', he does not say 'My men were beaten.'

The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

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.

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.

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

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

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures-in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.

Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?

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

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.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

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.

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