“Saint-Exupéry believed firmly that children see the important things in life—such as the bonds of friendship and responsibility—more clearly than adults do because they see with their hearts, not just with their eyes. (‘One sees clearly only with the heart,’ says the fox to the prince in the story’s most quoted lines. ‘The essential is invisible to the eye.’) In other words, children see with awe what adults look at with cynicism, and in the conversations between the pilot and the Little Prince the former is reminded of what childhood was like. By the end of the book he has been changed totally by the encounter.