Butterflies Quotes

“Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”
― John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.”
― George Carlin

“Butterflies are self propelled flowers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“a flower knows, when its butterfly will return,
and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand;
but now it hurts, to watch you leave so soon,
when I don't know, if you will ever come back.”
― Sanober Khan

“You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, The Funny Thing Is...

“She liked being reminded of butterflies. She remembered being six or seven and crying over the fates of the butterflies in her yard after learning that they lived for only a few days. Her mother had comforted her and told her not to be sad for the butterflies, that just because their lives were short didn't mean they were tragic. Watching them flying in the warm sun among the daisies in their garden, her mother had said to her, see, they have a beautiful life. Alice liked remembering that.”
― Lisa Genova, Still Alice

“He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.”
― Gemma Malley, The Declaration

“I tell of hearts and souls and dances...
Butterflies and second chances;
Desperate ones and dreamers bound,
Seeking life from barren ground,
Who suffer on in earthly fate
The bitter pain of agony hate,
Might but they stop and here forgive
Would break the bonds to breathe and live
And find that God in goodness brings
A chance for change, the hope of wings
To rest in Him, and self to die
And so become a butterfly.”
― Karen Kingsbury, Oceans Apart

“Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“But on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly
never dies.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

“We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.”
― LeeAnn Taylor

“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

“When I was a girl I would look out my bedroom window at the caterpillars; I envied them so much. No matter what they were before, no matter what happened to them, they could just hide away and turn into these beautiful creatures that could fly away completely untouched.”
― Patch Adams

“Butterflies can't see their wings. They can't see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.”
― Naya Rivera

“Like a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis, waiting for the perfect moment, I was waiting for the day I could burst forth and fly away and find my home.”
― Emme Rollins, Dear Rockstar

“If we cannot flap with the butterflies of “happiness,” we must bring to life the cascades of “joy,” conjuring up the spell of its enchantment and rolling cheerfully on the splashing waves of the future. ("Waiting for Mr. Out-placer")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“A fallen blossom
returning to the bough, I thought --
But no, a butterfly.”
― Arakida Moritake, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology

“A power of Butterfly must be -
The Aptitude to fly
Meadows of Majesty concedes
And easy Sweeps of Sky -”
― Emily Dickinson

“Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?"

"It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally."

...

" ... I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. I'm sure it means they've died, but I can never find their bodies. They don't leave any trace behind. It's like they've been absorbed by the air. They're dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“Minutes passed by. A little blue butterfly landed on my nose. I blinked at it and it fluttered to my ear. A big yellow butterfly gently floated over and landed on my paw. Soon a whole swarm of them floated up and down around me, like a swirl of multicolored petals. It happened in my backyard, too, if the magic was strong enough. Butterflies were small and light, and very magic sensitive. For some reason I made them feel safe and they gravitated to me like iron shavings to a magnet. They ruined my ferocious badass image, but you’d have to be a complete beast to swat butterflies.

If a baby deer frolicked out from between the buildings trying to cuddle up, I would roar. I wouldn’t bite it, but I would roar. I had my limits.”
― Ilona Andrews, Hexed

“In our day and age, global society has been saturated with the wrong teaching of false positivity. The denial of darkness never equates the abundance of light. And the denial of your actual character never equates to the reality of your best character. People today are afraid to work on themselves and on their actual realities, they believe that outward appearances are enough. Outward appearances have become everything in our current day and age. People don't see what they are actually like, nor who they actually are, in reality. They live in a phantasmic version of reality. It has to stop. In the phantasmic version of reality, there is no chance to experience true love, true goodness, and true metamorphosis. The caterpillar does not become a butterfly by telling everybody it has wings. It actually buries itself in darkness and grows those wings.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Ballet in the air...
Twin butterflies until, twice white
They Meet, they mate”
― Bashō, Japanese Haiku

“The thing about butterflies, Mr. Crow, is that they need to be admired from afar.”
― A. Zavarelli, Crow

“Illium says that perhaps I can use them to flutter someone to death.
- Aodhan to Jason, Archangel's Storm”
― Nalini Singh, Archangel's Storm

“They're butterflies because...well, he thought it was cool. They eat humans.”
― Katsura Hoshino, D.Gray-man, Vol. 11

“Butterflies are beautiful, but the process of emerging from the chrysalis and spreading your wings can hurt like fucking hell. But still, you will survive the transformation (over and over again) and you will fly. Remember this when it hurts the most. This is the metamorphosis, the going down to liquid, and the rising again. It’s no joke – but damn, it’s one hell of a journey.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc

“I know life is not rainbows and butterflies, but I’d rather die delusional than being a mature cynic.”
― Abhaidev, That Thing About You