Sunday, May 3, 2009

Unique in all the world

From The Little Prince by Antoine St Exupery, Ch 21:

[background: The little prince is from a planet that is only occupied by him, a rose--his only friend, and pesky baobab trees. He goes on a journey which eventually leads him to Earth. Along the way he learns many life lessons, among them those about the importance of friendship.]

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarassed.

"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 saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
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"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."[said the fox]

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

1 comment:

Tim said...

There's an episode of LOST this season that makes all kinds of references to this story. Admittedly, I started thinking about LOST when I read this blog post. :)