No. 11517
A man often thinks: there’s a beautiful girl, a lovely flower, walking through the town in spring, smiling in all directions, and she’s not even aware of how lovely she is. This thought naturally develops into the intention to acquire this flower who is unaware of her own beauty for considerably less than her market value. Nothing could be more naive. The man is aware of her beauty, but the girl, the lovely flower, is not? It’s like a farmer from some remote village who has sold his farm and come to city to buy an Ford C-Max walking past the Bugatti sales room, seeing a young salesman in the window and thinking: ‘He’s very green . . . maybe he’ll believe that an orange Veyron SS is cheaper than Ford, seeing as it’s only got two doors? I must try having a word with him, while he’s in the place on his own . . .’ A man like that is very funny, of course, and he has no chance at all of getting what he wants. The tragedy of this farmer, and that of all other men, is that they run after beauty without understanding its nature.