The Little Prince

The enduring message of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's

self-illustrated fable

is 'It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.' With over 80-million copies sold~the plot of a pilot marooned in the desert meeting a young prince from an asteroid~created one of the best-selling books ever.

Born in Lyon, Saint-Exupery studied architecture until WWI military service intervened. Post-war he was a leader in international postal flight. He survived his 1935 crash in the Libyan Sahara, but days later was severely dehydrated and hallucinating when he was saved by a Bedouin on a camel.

In WWII, he joined the Free French Forces and was on a reconnaissance flight when his plane disappeared over the Mediterranean off Marseilles on the night of July 31,1944. He was 44-years old.

Saint-Exupery said:

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile when contemplated in the image of a cathedral. A single life event can awaken us to a total stranger within. No one is humiliated to receive charity because it is really a gift to God. Love is inexhaustible, ‘The more you give, the more you have.’

He cared about the dignity of others and believed it a sin for any to undermine another’s self-respect. He loved ‘the zest’ of adventure, victory and creative action, and said if you wish to build a ship, don’t give people tasks, but teach them to ‘to long for the endless immensity of the sea.’ That life has meaning to the degree one barters it for something other than oneself. And while he considered war a disease, he felt a man was responsible to sacrifice for his country.

He referred to the land of tears as a secret place. ‘He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.”

The author of ‘The Little Prince’ was a prince of a man.