The Little Prince

All grown-ups were once children - although few of them remember it.


To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures...


"Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies." (The Little Prince's flower)


"Then you shall judge yourself," the king answered. "that is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom." (The king on first planet)


"Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friendship anymore." (The fox)


"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." (The fox)


"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." (The fox)


"Were they not satisfied where they were?" asked the little prince.
"No one is ever satisfied where he is," said the switchman.


"The men where you live," said the little prince, "raise five thousand roses in the same garden -- and they do not find in it what they are looking for."
"They do not find it," I replied.
"And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water."
"Yes, that is true," I said.
And the little prince added: "But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart..."


One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed...


"All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You - you alone - will have the stars as no one else has them -"
"What are you trying to say?"
"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night... You - only you - will have stars that can laugh!"
And he laughed again.
"And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you..."

(The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery)