Quote 1
And then he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (21.34-36)
This statement of the fox’s about being able to see best and most clearly “with the heart” is also the heart of the book. Seriously, though, this important secret is something the fox tells the prince and something the prince tells the narrator – in turn, it’s something all of them tell us, as readers. This is the “secret,” the big deal around which this book is centered, and the clue that helps us understand all the things happening within it. Insides are more important than outsides. You can’t just look at things with your eyes. If you do, you’ll miss what’s really “essential” about them.
Quote 2
“The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen.” (24.19)
What we can’t see changes what we can see. (That idea’s a bumper sticker waiting to happen.) The prince’s flower is something “that cannot be seen.” Even though he can’t see her, though, he knows she’s there, out there somewhere in the stars. Because she exists, even unseen, her presence makes the stars that are visible so “beautiful.”
This point also helps us understand the fox’s big idea about seeing with your heart, not your eyes. The flower is something that can be experienced with the heart, even when she is too far to be seen. Finding the flower with your heart helps you find the beauty in the stars.
Quote 3
“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’ And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you…” (26.52)
Despite the fact that he’s planning to leave, which makes the narrator incredibly sad, the prince tries to use this departure to give his good friend a gift: stars that laugh! So, although the prince’s departure will cause the narrator great pain, the memory of it will bring him happiness, too. (We know, we know. It’s small consolation for losing a friend like this one.)
Quote 4
“You understand… It is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy.”
I said nothing.
“But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells…”(26.70-72)
The prince is about to undergo a transformation that is so intense that he will be leaving his body behind. Even so, he tells the narrator not to be upset. For the prince, the end of “this body” doesn’t mean the end of his being or the end of his life. Instead, he compares his body, once he will leave it, to “an old abandoned shell.” The body is just like a carrying case for what really matters, which is inside.
Quote 5
“That doesn’t matter. Where I live, everything is so small!”
And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added:
“Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far…” (3.28-30)
We’re only in chapter 3 and already there are signs that this isn’t going to be the happiest of books. Uh-oh. The prince is talking about his home, which should be a happy thing, but there’s “a hint of sadness,” in his tone. Although he loves his planet and it’s dear to him, its size has also limited him.
Quote 6
“If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself: ‘Somewhere, my flower is there…’ But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened… And you think that is not important!” (7.30)
The prince’s life may have been limited, in what he could see or do or enjoy, but that didn’t keep him from becoming wise. In fact, even without much experience or education, the prince knows what can take a person from happiness to total dejection in the blink of an eye.
Quote 7
“Who are you?” he demanded, thunderstruck.
“We are roses,” the roses said.
And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden! (20.6-8)
This is a pretty good reason for getting sad: Something that the prince had firmly believed to be true (that his own flower on his planet was totally unique) seems, in this moment, to be absolutely untrue. Boo.
Quote 8
“You have good poison? You are sure that it will not make me suffer too long?”
I stopped in my tracks, my heart torn asunder; but still I did not understand. (26.9-10)
The narrator’s emotions are faster than his brain. His “heart” knows what he doesn’t “understand.”
Quote 9
“So you, too, come from the sky! Which is your planet?”
At that moment I caught a gleam of light in the impenetrable mystery of his presence; and I demanded, abruptly:
“Do you come from another planet?” (3.11-13)
Here, the prince points out what seems like a pretty important connection between himself and his potential new friend: they both “come from the sky.” But at the same time as he notices a similarity, he points to a difference. The narrator isn’t from another planet, and the prince is. Something that seems really normal to the prince (being from another planet) is actually incredibly surprising to the narrator.
Quote 10
“If I owned a silk scarf,” he said, “I could put it around my neck and take it away with me. If I owned a flower, I could pluck that flower and take it away with me. But you cannot pluck the stars from heaven…”
“No. But I can put them in the bank.” (13.42-3)
Here’s a big difference of opinion between two characters who inhabit different versions of reality. The prince sees the stars as they appear in the sky, or “from heaven.” You can see them but you can’t touch or hold them, like you could small objects like “a silk scarf” or a flower. For that reason, he thinks, people can’t possess the stars. But the businessman thinks you can own anything, just by saying you do. If you can count it, for example, you can own it.
Quote 11
“All men have stars,” he answered, “but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they are wealth. But all these stars are silent. You—you alone—will have the stars as no one else has them—”
“What are you trying to say?”
“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night… You—only you—will have stars that can laugh!” (26.18-20)
Things can mean different things depending on how you perceive them. Because of their friendship, the prince is giving the narrator a chance to view the stars in a way that no one else can: as a clue to how the prince is doing, somewhere up in the stars, and as a means of finding laughter.
Quote 12
“That man is the only one of them all whom I could have made my friend. But his planet is indeed too small. There is no room on it for two people…”
What the little prince did not dare confess was that he was sorry most of all to leave this planet, because it was blest every day with 1440 sunsets! (14.36-7)
Do you think the prince likes sunsets even more than he likes friends? Why or why not?
Quote 13
“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean—‘tame’?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.” (21.15-16)
In a way, by meeting each other the prince and the fox both get what they want. The prince wants friends and the fox wants to be tamed. The two see friendship and taming as different things, but are they really the same thing?
Quote 14
“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.” (21.52)
This moment is both sad and glorious. It’s sad because the prince is telling the flowers that they “are nothing.” They don’t know what taming is and haven’t experienced it. Without that knowledge or experience, they aren’t anything; they don’t stand out from the crowd. However, it’s also a glorious moment, because in it the prince is finally realizing how special his fox and his flower are because they are his friends.
Quote 15
“It is a good thing to have a friend, even if one is about to die. I, for instance, am very glad to have a fox as a friend…” (24.8)
The Little Prince just keeps on bringing the sad, doesn’t it? Here, the prince is facing the possibility of his own death. What makes that death even more piteous is that the prince is so “glad to have a fox as a friend.” He is less focused on the sadness of dying and more focused on the gladness of having a friend. But all of this just makes the sadness even sadder, doesn’t it?
Quote 16
“[…] And if I know—I, myself—one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning, without even noticing what he is doing—Oh! You think that is not important!” (7.28)
To believe that a single flower and sheep are so important, or so vital, takes a certain kind of purity. Most people wouldn’t get upset about such a thing. Their experience has taught them to worry about things that seem more “important,” like bills and timetables and even having the right color backpacks. The narrator, for example, doesn’t seem all that bothered about the sheep because he’s thinking about fixing his plane…and that’s what upsets the prince so much. To the prince, something like a plane getting fixed isn’t nearly as important as safeguarding his flower from his sheep.
Quote 17
And the little prince asked himself:
“How could he recognize me when he had never seen me before?”
He did not know how the world is simplified for kings. To them, all men are subjects. (10.4-6)
At first, when reading this passage, we might think that the prince is the more innocent one. He’s the one who hasn’t heard of how kings view the world or what kings do (even though he’s a prince). As the narrator explains, the prince “did not know how the world is simplified for kings.”
But, if we look closer, it starts to seem like maybe the kings are the innocent ones—even foolishly innocent, perhaps. The kings think “all men are subjects” and look at the world in a simplified way. Maybe they’re the ones who haven’t had enough exposure.
Quote 18
“I ought not to have listened to her,” he confided to me one day. “One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity.” (8.13)
The prince looks back at his younger self and feels wiser in comparison. By traveling, he has learned how he should have behaved when reacting to the grandiose claims of his naïve flower.
Quote 19
“And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water.”
“Yes, that is true,” I said.
And the little prince added:
“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart…” (25.16-19)
Most people are foolish, it seems. They go through life searching for something. And what is that thing? Well, the prince explains that this something “could be found in one single rose, or in a little water.” And a rose or some water is available anywhere. They are too available, almost, and so don’t seem special enough.
So, when people do see those things with their eyes, they “are blind.” The prince explains further that if people could look at these things “with the[ir] heart[s],” then they would be content and would have found what they were looking for. A piece of innocent wisdom from the little prince!
Quote 20
“The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! […]” (8.27)
The prince admits he should’ve worked harder to understand and get to know his flower. She made it hard for him to know her or see the real her. He looked at the obvious and didn’t see what really mattered. If he’d looked harder, and persisted, then he would’ve gotten to know her better.