"'The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen.'

I replied, "Yes, that is so." And, without saying anything more, I looked across the ridges of sand that were stretched out before us in the moonlight.

'The desert is beautiful,' the little prince added.

And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...

'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...'

I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart...

'Yes,' I said to the little prince. 'The house, the stars, the desert-- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!'"

From chapter 24 of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.