Yesterday, I read The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupery. You may think that it is a children's book, but it actually contains a lot of symbolisms. The king of the universe makes orders that are designed to fit the needs of the people. By doing so, it makes him look like a good king, yet he has no power over anything. The businessman who cares only about figure owns and stars (or wealth) and counts them continuously. The alcoholic man who drinks to forget about that he drinks... Somewhat of a self-pitying in a sense... The geographer who figure out the geography of the universe without exploring places. He just sits and waits for answers, and doesn't really go out his way to search for truth. hmm... I think the author intends to let the readers see the world from a different perspective. Anyhow... I also find some really nice passages and quotes in there. So here they are...

And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this: (sorry, no picture to show you, but it is supposed to be a boa constrictor with a bulging up belly.)

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?"

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this: (again, no picture to show you unless you read the book. it is somewhat like a cross-section of the first picture so you can actually see an elephant inside the snake.)

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. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. So the imagination and innocence of a child gets erased by what is deemed to be more important by the society.

"If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself:'somewhere, my flower is there...'" That is the little prince talking to the first-person about the flower on his planet that he loves.

"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 friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me..." The fox said this to the little prince so they would become friends.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we waved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose." :) I like this. Although, I wouldn't want anybody to die for me out of love or the other way around... It might sound romantic to have someone die for someone he or she loves, but... if the individual really loves a person, I don't think he/she would want the other person to die for him/her. I wouldn't.

"Goodbye," said 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." very true, don't you think?

"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 along--will have the stars as no one else has them--" (skip a line) "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 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! ......(skip a couple lines)...It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh..." this is really pretty. be happy. :)

"You understand...It is too far. I cannot carry body with me. It is too heavy."

I said nothing.

"But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells..."

I really like this book. It was really fun to read...and it reminded me of the really important things in life... happiness, friendship, and love--the non-tangible things.