Le Petit Prince

This passage, right after the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, has explained the confusion with which grown-ups treat his drawing. Although it is a picture of an elephant inside a boa constrictor, many adults see that it is a hat. When they find out what it actually is meant to be, they discourage him from drawing:

"So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable. 

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. 

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:
"That is a hat." 

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man."

I love The Little Prince. I remember a drama production put on by Act3 when I was young, and my brother was the Prince! And the one line I remember him saying, "That sheep looks too sickly." He wasn't a very good actor at all now that I think about it, but it was fun watching that. And the book is lovely... when I'm better at French I'll read it in French, the way it was originally written and meant to be read. But this passage really can make me cry. It really shows how wrong the world's got it. He says he would bring himself "down to his level", that all that great knowledge, expansive wisdom about golf and politics and business is beneath knowing about boa constrictors and stars. When he speaks of it from a child's point of view (or rather, ex-child) the essence of it is clear and simple. A child hasn't been tainted by the atrocities of greed, the love of money, the need for power. A child, very simply, follows his heart, and does what makes him happy. And so with such a straightforward, unbiased method of function, a child makes a very good example of how to live, and how to live happily.