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.

More from Antoine de Saint-Exupery

• A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
• As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
• Children, I say plainly, "watch out for the baobabs!"
• Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.
• Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
• I did not know what to say to him. I felt awkward and blundering. I did not know how I could reach him, where I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more. It is such a secret place, the land of tears.