Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Wind, Sand and Stars

Terre Des Hommes

Ash Hoe

« La terre nous en apprend plus long sur nous que tous les livres. Parce qu'elle nous résiste. L'homme se découvre quand il se mesure avec l'obstacle. »

Recipient of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Wind, Sand and Stars captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying. Translated by Lewis Galantière.

Flying is not the point. The aeroplane is a means, not an end. It is not for the plane that we risk our lives. Nor is it for the sake of his plough that the farmer ploughs. But through the plane we can leave the cities and their accountants, and find a truth that farmers know… We wait for dawn as a gardener waits for spring. We wait for the next port of call as a promised land, and we seek our truth in the stars. 

And so the joy of being alive was gathered in that aromatic and burning first taste, in that blend of milk, coffee and wheat which brings communion with peaceful pastures, with exotic plantations and with harvests, communion with all the earth. 

sage

Ann Gabrielle

▪️ "The marvel of marvels was that there on the rounded back of the planet, between this magnetic sheet and those stars, a human consciousness was present in which as in a mirror that rain could be reflected." 
 ▪️ "What was painful to me was not his suffering (for I did not believe he was suffering); it was that for the first time it came on me that when a man dies, an unknown world passes away[...] The hard bone of his skull was in a sense an old treasure chest; and I could not know what colored stuffs, what images of festivities, what vestiges, obsolete, and vain in this desert, had escaped the shipwreck." 
▪️ "Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction."

baelgia

"One thing that I had loved in Paraguay was the ironic grass that showed the tip of its nose between the pavements of the capital, that slipped in on behalf of the invisible but ever-present virgin forest to see if man still held the town, if the hour had not come to send all these stones tumbling."

So beautifully written.

Terre des hommes

Safiya 

Ce n'est qu'en survolant l'aride désert, que les richesses secrètes de la terre se sont offertes, j'y reviendrai quand je perdrai de nouveau la carte au trésor qu'est cette vie ou cette mort, des deux on ne sait la plus heureuse, naître ou mourir ?

New favourite book ever..
Life-changing and now i want to be an aviator lol 
Prose is beautiful, philosophical ideas are beautiful, descriptions and scenery and vibes are beautiful 
Please do yourself a favour and read this book

'It was a dark night, with only occasional scattered lights glittering like stars on the plain' The aviator and author of The Little Prince describes vast, otherworldly landscapes, crash landings and magical encounters in his transcendent account of flying over the Sahara and the Andes. Ten new titles in the colourful, small-format, portable new Pocket Penguins series

Wind, Sand and Stars

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