from The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
(1900-1944)
The fox gazed at
the little prince, for a long time.
“Please—tame me!” he said.
“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much
time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to
understand.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “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…”
“What must I
do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,”
replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me—like
that—in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will
say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a
little closer to me, every day…”
Copyright ©1943, 1971 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
pp. 78,
83, 84
Count Antoine Marie Roger de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) was born in Lyon, France into an old family of provincial nobility. An accomplished aviator, he became one of the pioneers of international postal flight in the days when aircraft had few instruments and pilots flew by instinct. Flying and living in remote areas were the subjects of his early writings. He wrote Le Petit Prince, a child's fable for adults, in 1943. Flying for the French Air Force, Exupéry died when his plane went down in 1944.
Source: Wikipedia