the little prince

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been
concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them
intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand
miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my
fountain-pen.

And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my
misfortunes to be taken seriously.

"That doesn't matter. Where I live, everything is so small!"
And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added:
"Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far . . ."

If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of
the grown-ups and their ways. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you
any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What
games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many
brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these
figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

If you were to say to the grown-ups: "I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the
windows and doves on the roof," they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would
have to say to them: "I saw a house that cost $20,000." Then they would exclaim: "Oh, what a pretty house
that is!"

If I try to
describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. 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 . . .

My friend never explained anything to me. He thought, perhaps, that I was like himself. 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.

And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces . . .

"It is a question of discipline," the little prince said to me later on. "When you've finished your own toilet in
the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care. You must
see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished
from the rosebushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work," the
little prince added, "but very easy."

Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life . . . For a long time you
had found your only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset. I

"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"

Flowers are weak creatures. They are naïve. They reassure themselves as best they
can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons . . ."

"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!"

"The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years. For millions of years the sheep have been
eating them just the same. And is it not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to
so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them? Is the warfare between the sheep and
the flowers not important? Is this not of more consequence than a fat red-faced gentleman's sums? And if I
know--I, myself--one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but
which one little sheep can destroy in a single

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

"I ought not to have listened to her," he confided to me one day. "One never ought to listen to the flowers.
One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not
know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only
have filled my heart with tenderness and pity."

"The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by
words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her . . . I
ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so
inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her . . ."

The little prince also pulled up, with a certain sense of dejection, the last little shoots of the baobabs. He
believed that he would never want to return. But on this last morning all these familiar tasks seemed very
precious to him. And when he watered the flower for the last time, and prepared to place her under the
shelter of her glass globe, he realized that he was very close to tears.

"I have been silly," she said to him, at last. "I ask your forgiveness. Try to be happy . . ."

Of course I love you," the flower said to him. "It is my fault that you have not known it all the while. That
is of no importance. But you--you have been just as foolish as I. Try to be happy . . . Let the glass globe be.
I don't want it any more."

He did not know how the world is simplified for kings. To them, all men are subjects.

"If I ordered a general," he would say, by way of example, "if I ordered a general to change himself into a
sea bird, and if the general did not obey me, that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my
fault."

"Exactly. One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform," the king went on.
"Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into
the sea, they would rise up in revolution. I have the right to require obedience because my orders are
reasonable."

"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."

"I have good reason to believe that somewhere on my planet there is an old
rat. I hear him at night. You can judge this old rat. From time to time you will condemn him to death. Thus
his life will depend on your justice. But you will pardon him on each occasion; for he must be treated
thriftily. He is the only one we have."

"It may well be that this man is absurd. But he is not so absurd as the king, the conceited man, the
businessman, and the tippler. 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."

"That is very funny! A day lasts only one minute, here where you live!"

What the little prince did not dare confess was that he was sorry most of all to leave this planet, because it
was blest every day with 1440 sunsets!

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
Henry Ellis

But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
Umberto Eco

Everything in life is luck.
Donald Trump

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.
John Burroughs