In this post, I want to talk about a book that I have read at least three times (once in each language: english, portuguese and spanish) and, hopefully, will be reading another time on its original dialect, le française (it has became kind of a must-do thing on each language I learn). I want this post to be a répertoire of the phrases that I liked the most mixed with some meaningfull dialogues.
On the first pages of the book, we find out the first dilema: the narrator talks about the innumerable times he tried to explain to adults how his drawings were not a hat but an elephant that just had been eaten by a Boa Constrictor . Antoine (the author of the book) explains the anxiety he felt as a child caused by the "stupidity" of these adults, and on a certain way explains how imagination - an intangible asset we have as humans that differentiates us from most animals -gets corroded as we grow up; it also shows how two absolut perceptions (the childish and the grown up) can only be understood by someone outside of the context -in this case, the reader- , which comprehends both realities and, after all, appreciates the way this figure can perfectly symbolize both things. On the same trend, the story tells us the journey the little prince begins when realising he had tons of problems in his home planet -the asteroid B 612 -, which led him to a series of planetswhere he got to know a King with no minions or a businessman with no time to lose, situations that allow him to appreciate how these tiny issues in his home could actually be something you get to miss after a while abroad.
The Little Prince has plenty of situations that get you to think (another one is the conversation with the fox), and I commit myself to taking notes the next time I read it so I can write a better quality post. Besides that, this book has plenty of quotes that are gold nuggets; here are some:
The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart
Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy ready-made things in the shops. But since there are no shops where you can buy friends, men no longer have any friends
“People where you live,” the little prince said, “grow five thousand roses in one garden... Yet they don’t find what they’re looking for... And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose.”
I really need to read this in English and French! Great piece (I agree with the corrections you've already been given) :)
Great! I think you're at least "intermediate" in English :-) Some errors, sure, but you're expressing complex ideas very well. (The Little Prince! I must read that again!)