One of the most moving books I've ever had the honor to explore. For me, it read very much like sublime scripture. Certainly a life-changing book. I seem to remember the edition I read (it was borrowed) as being a rare, vintage, blue or red, cloth-bound, gold embossed and gilded edged hardback... in my hands it felt extremely burly, solid and biblical -worn to just the right condition and state of readability. The translation was spot-on. I'll never forget the pivotal experience of reading this....

This is a literary masterpiece that can have a truly formative power on those who are ready for it. It reads like a beautiful poetry that is rich with vision, wisdom and insight. It encompasses subtleties and nuances of greatness and pettiness, love and indifference, pain and numbness, duty and disregard, power and weakness, virtue and corruption, self-sacrifice and selfishness, worth and worthlessness, real values and garbage...just about everything worth contemplating to those who have not bee...

I admire Saint-Exupery, but this book gave me mixed feelings. It contains some nice wisdom, but on the other hand it has many downsides. The ideas could've been presented much shorter. The book is long and at points repeating, contradicting or confusing. I also found the language unnecessarily poetical many times. And many of the nuggets of wisdom, if I investigate them, are more like interesting observations than some sound advice about life, which seems to be the theme. There is value in it, b...

I have read a first ed. English translation of this. Published posthumously, it was meant by St. Ex. to be an overall capture of his philosophies. (Service, self-relance, gift of oneself to something larger). He may not have been able polish this as much as he regularly would one of his manuscripts. It is a tough, but worthwhile read that rewards perseverance with beautiful sparse images, suitable to the desert it takes place in.

It is the perfect book for the modern man that doesn’t have time to read but still wants to. You can read if you want 15 minutes every day. You can also open it at any page and read. It doesn’t require a plot to remember, because it has no plot. It is not a novel. The original version is structured in 219 chapters that are from just a paragraph to a couple of pages long. The chapters are philosophical notes of the author about life and humanity. He envisions a city that he rules over and he spea...

I would have them be like the branch of the olive tree. That one which bides its time. Then they will feel within them, like the swirling gust which tests the tree, the impulse of God's breath. *[...] I know that never any answer slakes our thirst. And that he who questions is seeking, primarily, the abyss. *For I perceived that man’s estate is as a citadel: he may throw down the walls to gain what he calls freedom, but then nothing of him remains save a dismantled fortress, open to the stars. A...

You know about that one proverbial book you would take with you on a desert island? Citadelle is it for me. Possibly because it's unfinished, and some parts are told several times, so you spend a lot of time choosing one iteration over another, and then changing your mind.Feels like a dialogue with the reader, about maybe the most important subject for us humans: the meaning of it all. Tentative, interactive and ambiguous.

Whether author or translator should be held responsible for a ponderous faux-biblical style, the substance belongs to Saint-Exupery, who presents a series of meditations on duty, courage, citizenship, love, and injustice, using all the symbols of The Little Prince (the rose, the desert, the fox, the absolute monarch) in a deeper and more tragic tone. I found my own faults condemned and harsh choices posed without ever feeling "judged."

I wish St Ex. would have lived to finish this one... and write many more!

Very rarely do I not finish a book, but after 106 of its 350 pages I'm putting this one down. I just can't deal with it.The beginning charmed me, because it was eloquent and because I disagreed with what it was saying. It was like Nietzsche, Plato, and Machiavelli decided to collaborate on a book: bizarre, but fascinating.Then it grew offensive. Really I have seldom seen such unapologetic fetishization of rape, such blatant disdain (disguised of course as compassion) for the Common Man (whatever...

This is the book I have to read many times in many different times of my life ...

Sertillanges once said that we suffer for want of life giving maxims. Wisdom of the Sands is full of life giving maxims. This book is a top five book for me. Exupery worked on it for many years and said that all his other books were rehearsals for this one. That's quite a claim for a man who wrote The Little Prince and Wind, Sand, and Stars. Perhaps the reason this book has gone out of print is that he died before it's completion and it is a series of proverbial reflections that could use some e...

If you've read this book - you've read them all. The opposite is also true: if you haven't read them all - don't bother with this book. While being one of the most dropped books of all time - its a great slow read where you can pause at any time and come back later.

If there would be one book only that everyone should read, this is it. I'm humbled and enlightened every time I read the pages of Citadella, or Wisdom of the Sands (English title). To me, this is an alive book. When I come back to it, open a page, read and it talks to me. The spirit of wisdom breaths on my neck. I digest those words with a careful contemplation and warming heart. I'm grateful for having the chance to come across this artwork

Page 9: So the father takes him into the desert to see a woman stripped naked and bound to a stake for some crime. "Listen," my father said. "She is discovering that which is essential."But I was a child, and craven."Perhaps she is suffering," I answered him, "and perhaps she's frightened, too.""No," my father said, "she has passed beyond suffering and fear. Those are diseases of the cattle pen, meet for the groundling herd. She is discovering the truth."And they stand there for a while listenin...

MAGIC. Totally magic. Something really special for every reader. Absolutely recommended.

I’ve read Czech version from 1975 which was shortened by the communist editors to 137 chapters out of 219 in the original. It is quite impossible to read quickly as many chapters contain an elaborate on a thought and are not interconnected. Having said that, there’s a common theme in the book that is key and I wish to read all the chapters one day which might give me a better perspective on Exupéry’s thoughts.

Easy to pick up and put down at any time, for any time. A great go-to book to scratch the itch to read without needing a long investment of time to take something away from it (quite the opposite in fact).

When I hear about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I always imagine his book „The little prince“. I have this book right now, with peeling edges, yellowing, which, as a memory of my grandmother, I left to myself. Exupéry as an author speaks indirectly, hides the core of his words and thoughts between the lines, so the works are mostly for the lives touched people.„The Citadel“ is a philosophically composed set of thoughts that speaks through the lips of the fortress commander. He is looking to his holdi...

Taken from the back cover, a "collection of parables expressing his philosophy of life" and "the art of ruling the self and others - an inherently severe art that demands duty, responsibility, discipline".While I acknowledge that the book was published posthumously, I think there would be benefit to further distill the "wisdom" from additional editing and organization of the chapters and content.