Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French writer, poet, and aviator who is best known for his novella The Little Prince. He was born in Lyon, France in 1900 and grew up in a wealthy family with a strong military tradition. Saint-Exupéry became interested in flying at a young age and eventually pursued a career as a pilot, traveling extensively for both his work and writing. His experiences as an aviator greatly influenced his writing, which often explored themes of love, loneliness, and the human condition and has been widely translated and touched readers of all ages around the globe. In addition to The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry wrote several books including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight. His writing has had a lasting impact and continues to be widely read and admired today, but he is also remembered for his tragic disappearance in 1944 while flying a reconnaissance mission for the French Air Force during World War II, and is believed to have died in the crash.

Selected Quotes:

  1. “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.”

  2. "A goal without a plan is just a wish."

  3. "What is essential is invisible to the eye, for it is only with the heart that one can see rightly." 

  4. "The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choice-less as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea."

  5. "In the mountains, there you feel free."

  6. "I have learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet success unexpected in common hours."

  7. "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."