Antoine de Saint Exupery’s depth of human understanding

Antoine de Saint Exupery was some guy. I still haven’t read his very famous book “The Little Prince” (its claimed to be the 3rd most selling book in the world, after The Bible and Gone With the Wind) , but it’s on my list now after being highly recommended by my cousin Akash.

He was an avaitor by vocation. They crash landed in the Sahara once, and where almost so dehydrated on their 3rd day they didn’t even sweat . Luckily they were rescued by a local fellow with a camel. The book Little Prince alludes to this experience as it apparently takes place in the desert.
The book was written in 1942 in his Long Island mansion. Sadly, just two years after he was reported missing on a mission to gather movement patterns of German troops.

Some of his quotes have this subtlety and profundity that resonates with you deeply, though it would have been hard to express them so elegantly on my own. It requires a very deep understanding of the human heart to be able to express such thoughts.

Here I share some which I happen to like a lot.

---

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

• A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.

• A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.

• Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.

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

• 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.

• True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
• A goal without a plan is just a wish.What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.
• Love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love’s opposite