What "The Little Prince" Taught Me About Seeing With the Heart

On its surface, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince is a children’s story about a pilot stranded in the desert who meets a small boy from a tiny asteroid. Underneath, it is one of the gentlest and most serious books about what adults forget. I have read it at different ages and found a different book each time, which is the surest sign of a real one. What it kept telling me, in its quiet way, is that the most important things in life are exactly the ones we cannot see, and that somewhere along the way most of us stop looking.

Here is what The Little Prince taught me about seeing with the heart, about the people we tame, and about the numbers grown-ups mistake for meaning.

Key takeaways

• “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” The things that matter most are felt, not seen.
• We become responsible, forever, for what we have tamed. Love creates bonds and duties.
• Grown-ups love numbers and miss the meaning the numbers are supposed to measure.
• One rose can matter more than a thousand because of the time and love we have given it.
• Wonder is not childish; losing it is the real impoverishment.

The trouble with grown-ups

The narrator begins with a wound. As a child he drew a picture of a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant, and every adult saw only a hat. So he gave up drawing and learned to talk about the things grown-ups care about, bridge and golf and politics and neckties, and they found him very sensible. Saint-Exupéry’s complaint is not that adults are evil, only that they have grown literal. They ask, of a new friend, not “what does his voice sound like?” but “how much money does his father make?”, as if a number could tell you anything that matters. I recognised, with some discomfort, how many of my own questions have quietly become the wrong ones.

Taming and being tamed

The heart of the book is the fox the little prince meets, who asks to be tamed. To tame, the fox explains, means to establish ties, and once you have tamed someone you become responsible for them, forever. Before they were tamed, the boy and the fox were nothing special to each other, one boy among many, one fox among many. Afterward they are unique in all the world. This is the most truthful account of love I know. It is not a feeling that arrives ready-made; it is built, slowly, through time and attention, and it leaves us bound. The bond is the point, even though it is also what makes the parting hurt.

The secret the fox gives

When the time comes to part, the fox gives the little prince a secret, simple enough for a child and deep enough for a lifetime: one sees clearly only with the heart; what is essential is invisible to the eye. The prince understands then why his single rose, ordinary as she looks, is more precious than a whole garden of identical roses: because she is his rose, the one he has watered and sheltered and listened to. It is the hours we give that make a thing irreplaceable. Value is not found in the object. It is created in the relationship.

What I’m taking with me

The Little Prince is short enough to finish in an hour and wise enough to carry for life. What I am taking is a warning against my own grown-up literalism, the habit of counting what can be counted and ignoring the rest. The book asks me to look again at the people and things I have tamed, to honour the responsibility that love creates, and to keep alive the part of me that can still be astonished by a sunset or a single, particular rose. As the prince knew, it is the time we waste on something that makes it so important.

Frequently asked questions

What is the main message of The Little Prince?

That the most important things in life cannot be seen with the eyes but only felt with the heart, and that love, attention, and wonder matter more than the numbers and facts adults tend to value.

What does the fox teach the little prince?

That to “tame” someone is to build ties of love and responsibility, and that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Relationships, not appearances, give life meaning.

Is The Little Prince a children’s book?

It is written as a children’s story but its themes of love, loss, and meaning speak just as much, often more, to adults. Many readers find it deepens with age.

References & further reading

1. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince. (Translated by Katherine Woods, 1943; or Richard Howard, 2000.)
2. Schiff, Stacy. Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
3. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. Wind, Sand and Stars. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939.