Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quote
The best place for discovering what a man is is the heart of the desert. Your plane has broken down, and you walk for hours, heading for the little fort at Nutchott. You wait for the mirages of thirst to gape before you. But you arrive and you find an old sergeant who has been isolated for months among the dunes, and he is so happy to be found that he weeps. And you weep, too. In the arching immensity of the night, each tells the story of his life, each offers the other the burden of memories in which the human bond is discovered. Here two men can meet, and they bestow gifts upon each other with the dignity of ambassadors.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The best place for discovering what a man is is the heart of the desert. Your plane has broken down, and you walk for hours, heading for the little fort at Nutchott. You wait for the mirages of thirst to gape before you. But you arrive and you find an old sergeant who has been isolated for months among the dunes, and he is so happy to be found that he weeps. And you weep, too. In the arching immensity of the night, each tells the story of his life, each offers the other the burden of memories in which the human bond is discovered. Here two men can meet, and they bestow gifts upon each other with the dignity of ambassadors.
Related Quotes
About Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Saint-Exupéry trained as a commercial pilot in the early 1920s, working airmail routes across Europe, Africa, and South America. Between 1926 and 1939, four of his literary works were published: the short story The Aviator, novels Southern Mail and Night Flight, and the memoir Wind, Sand and Stars. Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air Force for World War II and flew reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940. Being demobilised by the Air Force, Saint-Exupéry lived in exile in the United States between 1941 and 1943 and helped persuade it to enter the war. During this time, his works Flight to Arras and The Little Prince were published.
Saint-Exupéry joined the Free French Air Force in 1943, despite being past the maximum age for a war pilot and in declining health. During a reconnaissance mission over Corsica on 31 July 1944, Saint-Exupéry's plane disappeared: it is presumed to have crashed. Debris from the wreckage was discovered off the coast of Marseille in 2000, but the cause of the crash remains unknown.