He was a successful commercial pilot pre-war, joining the Armée de l’Air (French Air Force) on the outbreak of war, flying reconnaissance missions until the armistice with Germany. Following a spell writing in the United States, he joined the Free French Forces. He went missing on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in July 1944.

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Famous Sayings by Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s

1. A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

2. Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

3. Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

4. 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.

5. I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.

6. The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.

7. That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it’s because you’re truly a wise man.