"But you are innocent and true, and you come from a star..." The Little Prince
Last night I read 'Le Petite Prince' / 'The Little Prince' in one sitting after my beloved Melanie sent me the link with the English translation.
Oh my heart.
What a tender and lovely story filled with so many precious lines of truth. It felt like a hug. It reassured me that I have yet to become a grown up, and what a proud accomplishment that is in a world such as ours.
I'm not sure how I've managed not to read Le Petit Prince / The Little Prince before now, given its popularity and my love of all things pure and true, but what better way to be properly introduced to it than through French Immersion in Montreal.
Yesterday I signed up to read 'Le Petit Prince' for a class assignment. We had 5 books to choose from and I chose this because it is one of my bestie’s favourite books (the others being the Harry Potter series) and I had never read it in either French nor English. Well, before last night. Melanie sent me the English version after finding out I'd be reading the French one, and I had to delve into this beautiful piece right away.
It is such a special book, and I hope I will be better able to understand it in French now that I've read it in English.
Without further adieu, here are some of my favourite lines from the book.
"All grown-ups were once children, although few of them remember it."
"The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."
"But I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes. Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old."
"Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being little."
"I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: 'I am busy with matters of consequence!' And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man - he is a mushroom!"
"Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly showed herself."
"But I was too young to know how to love her..."
"For at least his work has some meaning. When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful."
"Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came," the snake spoke again. "But you are innocent and true, and you come from a star..."
"To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world."
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen."
"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. And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water. But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart."
"You know, my descent to the earth... tomorrow will be its anniversary."
"One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed..."
"I, too, am going back home today..."
"I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see that. It is not worth the trouble."
"He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound, because of the sand."
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