Disclaimer: Spoilers for The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery ahead. If you haven’t read this beautiful novella, you can find it online for free here.

One of my favourite scenes in The Little Prince is where the little prince realises a rose on his home planet looks just like an ordinary rose on Earth. This realisation throws the prince into turmoil, and forces him to re-examine his worth.

Then he went on with his thoughts: ‘I used to think myself rich, with a flower that was unique; but all I had was a common rose… which does not make me a great prince’. And, lying down in the grass, he began to cry.

Shortly after, a fox appears and the two become quite close. Over the course of their friendship, the prince slowly comes to realise that his rose was unique, after all. That there was something special about the emotion and time spent getting to know his rose, thus making it his special flower. And so, in a critical moment of the story, the little prince addresses the roses on Earth:

‘You are beautiful, but you are empty’, he went on. ‘One could not die for you. Of course, an ordinary passer-by would think my rose looked just like you. But in herself she matters more than all of you together, since it is she that I watered; since it is she that I placed under the glass dome; since it is she that I sheltered with the screen; since it is she… that I listened to, when she complained, or boasted, or when she was simply being silent. Since it is she who is my rose.’

To echo this sentiment, the fox gives a parting remark to the little prince, in what is the novella’s most famous line:

‘Goodbye,’ said the fox. ‘Now here is my secret, very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.’

There have been many essays and analyses on this quote, but to me it reveals a simple but powerful moral: that often, things are more complex than they seem. To really get to know something – a person, a fox or even a plant – requires a degree of looking past the superficial. And this is tough, for humans, animals or plants look similar and behave in (mostly) predictable ways. To truly understand one’s character requires a searching and feeling beneath the surface, which is often invisible to the eye.