3 of 18,014 Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quote of the Week from Greg Bover

“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.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)

Born into an aristocratic family, the Comte de Saint-Exupéry attended the French Naval Academy and studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts before joining the army in his early twenties and learning to fly. He became a celebrated airmail pilot on the route between Toulouse and Dakar, Senegal, and wrote movingly in high French style about his life in the air. During the Second World War, exiled to New York from Nazi-occupied France, Saint-Exupéry wrote his best known work, The Little Prince, a work of philosophical reflection masquerading as a children’s story which has become one of the best-selling books of all time. Returning to Europe to fight with the Free French, late in the war, Saint-Exupéry was lost at sea during a reconnaissance flight. He was the recipient of the Légion d’honneur.

Greg Bover