2. ”Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
3. “The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.” – Richard Bach
4. “You do not just wake up and become the butterfly. Growth is a process.” –
5. “Butterflies are nature’s angels. They remind us what a gift it is to be alive.” – Robyn Nola
6. “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” –
7. “Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves.” – Drew Barrymore
8. ”If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.” – Wendy Mass
9. “Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness and still become something beautiful.” – Anonymous
10. “As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people.” – Joseph B. Wirthlin
11. “A butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.” – Marlene Van Niekerk
12. ”Metamorphosis has always been the greatest symbol of change for poets and artists. Imagine that you could be a caterpillar one moment and a butterfly the next.” – Louie Schwartzberg
13. “Soar up high with the beauty and grace of a butterfly.” – Anonymous
14. “We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.” – LeeAnn Taylor
15. “Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time.” – Deborah Chaskin
16. “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” – Richard Buckminster Fuller
17. “The butterfly said to the sun, ‘They can’t stop talking about my transformation. I can only do it once in my lifetime. If only they knew, they can do it at any time and in countless ways.’” – Dodinsky
18. “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” – Rabindranath Tagore
19. “Failure is like a caterpillar before it becomes a butterfly.” – Peta Kelly
20. “Butterflies are self propelled flowers.” – R.H. Heinlein
21. “And when I was angry, when I was younger, I was in a cocoon. Now I’m a beautiful, black butterfly.” – Tracy Morgan
22. “You’ve got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.” – Mike Markkula
23. “Take time to be a butterfly.” – Gillian Duce
24. “How does one become a butterfly? You have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” – Anonymous
25. “We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the , the butterflies, the song of the birds if we can’t see the stars at night.” – Thomas Berry
26. “The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.” –
27. “I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.” – William Stafford
28. “The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.” – Tom Robbins
29. “Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
30. “May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun and find your shoulder to light on. To bring you luck, happiness, and riches. Today, tomorrow and beyond.” – Irish Blessing
31. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” –
32. “Butterflies live most of their lives being completely ordinary. And then, one day, the unexpected happens. They burst from their cocoons in a blaze of colors and become utterly extraordinary. It is the shortest phase of their lives, but it holds the greatest importance. It shows us how empowering change can be.” – Kelseyleigh Reber
33. “Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies, it creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation.” – Stephanie Marshall
34. “A butterfly symbolized the acceptance of each new phase in life. To keep the faith as everything around you changed.” – Lisa Kleypas
35. “We can learn a lesson from the butterfly beginning its life crawling along the ground, then spinning a cocoon, patiently waiting until the day it will fly.” – Heather Wolf
36. “I mean, everything that is upon this earth, even from a worm or a caterpillar that blossoms into a butterfly, you know, these things are just amazing.” – Lil B
37. “A caterpillar, after its deep slumber, wakes up to reality to realize, that truth is not always bitter after all!” – Manali Oak
38. “The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully. It simply flies on.” – Guillermo del Toro
39. “A butterfly always reminds that there is always beauty at the end of all the pain.” – Anonymous
40. “I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky. Then I awoke. Now I wonder—Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?” – Chuang Tzu
41. “I’m still like a butterfly going from one job to another job. But it’s quite lovely, I hope to keep this freedom, to have fun.” – Carine Roitfeld
42. “Let go of the past. Trust the future. Embrace change. Come out of the cocoon. Unfurl your wings. Dare to get off the ground. Ride the breezes. Savor the flowers. Put on your brightest colors. Let your beauty show.” – Anonymous
43. “A great beginning is sometimes at the point of what you thought would be the end of everything.” – Dodinsky
44. “A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.” – Mandy Hale
45. “Go on, hitch a ride on the back of a butterfly. There’s no better way to fly.” – Patrick Monahan
46. “Change can be beautiful. Butterflies are the greatest proof of this.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
47. “And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.” – Ruskin Bond
48. “If there is one creature that represents my essence, it’s butterflies.” – Patricia Velasquez
49. “Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine.” – Jeffrey Glassberg
50. “The wings of transformation are born of patience and struggle.” – Janet Dickens
51. “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
52. “Happiness is like a butterfly—the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” –
53. “Catching butterflies won’t give you a taste of freedom but the knowledge that weights are not carried in wings.” – Goitsemang Mvula
54. “To all the broken-hearted and anyone feeling sad, may your hearts heal and may you feel happy in your lives. Flutter as the butterflies do.” – Krystal
55. “Butterflies are God’s confetti, thrown upon the Earth in celebration of His love.” – K. D’Angelo
56. “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” –
57. “They seemed to suddenly come upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in a winter wood.” – Edith Wharton
58. “I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.” –
59. “Making something and sending it out into the world and then people not only responding to it but adopting it for their own and making a separate thing for it, that’s beautiful. It just shows you how much you can affect other people. The butterfly effect of everything you put out into the world.” – Marketa Irglova
60. “We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.” –
61. “The term ‘breakout’ always makes me think of an inmate or some butterfly emerging out of a cocoon.” – Tessa Thompson
62. “The butterflies—what an educated sense of beauty they have. They seem only an ornament to society, and yet, if they were gone, how substantial would be their loss.” – Phil Robinson
63. “I’d be a butterfly, living a rover, dying when fair things are fading away.” – Thomas Haynes Bayly
64. “The cynic finds love with the idealist. The rebel with the conformist. The social butterfly with the bookworm. They help each other balance their lives.” – Joyce Brothers
65. “Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.” – Rabindranath Tagore
66. “To know God, watch a butterfly return to the same tree—after a year and a thousand miles.” – Jonathan Lockwood Huie
67. “If you smile when you see a butterfly, you have happiness in your soul.” – Diana Cooper
68. “Butterflies love to be out in the sunshine, just like people. You can look for them on warm, bright sunny days.” – John Woodward
69. “Nature’s message was always there and for us to see. It was written on the wings of butterflies.” – Kjell B. Sandved
70. “If you want to fly, you have to flap your own wings!” – Claire Williams
71. “Love is like a butterfly, beautiful and delicate. If you truly care for it, you’ll do whatever you can to make it happy, even if that means letting it go.” – Scott Pemberton
72. “Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.” – Philip Pullman
73. “When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away.” – Anna Pavlova
74. “When, within our souls and psyches, we are made aware of a safe but insistent drumbeat, repeated like butterfly wings in motion. We sense the message, that our inner self has begun its search for freedom.” – Mary Meeker
75. “Just when the caterpillar thought ‘I am incapable of moving, it became a butterfly.” – Annette Thomas
76. “Open your heart and mind like the wings of a butterfly. See then how high you can fly.” – Zeenat Aman
77. “For a new year to bring you something new, make a move, like a butterfly tearing its cocoon! Make a move!” – Mehmet Murat İldan
78. “When a caterpillar bursts from its cocoon and discovers it has wings, it does not sit idly, hoping to one day turn back. It flies.” – Kelseyleigh Reber
79. “The butterfly does not count the months of its life but rather it counts the moments and yet all the time it has is still enough.” – Rabindranath Tagore
80. “Someday, I will be a beautiful butterfly, and then everything will be better.” – Anonymous
81. “Don’t wait for your wings, fight for them.” – Gayatri Pardeshi
82. “Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come.” – Mario Quintana
83. “Life without pain is a life spent in a cocoon. You gotta break the cocoon to experience your beauty.” – Shubhi
84. “In nature, a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with humans, it is the other way around. A lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.” –
85. “Social entrepreneurship is like a butterfly, sucking honey from a flower, but the flower won’t die. They’re helping the flower to make pollination.” – Arunachalam Muruganantham
86. “To catch the butterflies and the rainbows of your dream, walk alone, keep faith in yourself, focus your energy and start the adventure.” – Amit Ray
87. “Once you let people know anything about what you think, that’s it, you’re dead. Then they’ll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them, yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons.” – Helen Oyeyemi
88. “It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.” – George Vaillant
89. “Butterfly was certainly a vehicle for me, and if it died, it still would have served its purpose, in spades. We never expected it to give me the visibility it has given me. It was just a small thing as a vehicle, and suddenly the whole world knew about it.” – Pia Zadora
90. “For our people, butterflies are a symbol of hope. It’s said that if you capture one in your hands and whisper your dreams to it, it will carry them up to the heavens so that the wish can be granted.” – Sherrilyn Kenyon
91. “She is like a butterfly—beautiful to look at but hard to catch.” – Nikki Rowe
92. “When it comes to religion today, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. Somehow we’re going to have to relearn that the deep things of God don’t come suddenly.” – Sue Monk Kidd
93. “When the spirit of nature touches us, our hearts turn into a butterfly!” – Mehmet Murat Ildan
94. “There’s a metaphor Vincent Eades likes to use, ‘If you examine a butterfly according to the laws of aerodynamics, it shouldn’t be able to fly. But the butterfly doesn’t know that, so it flies.’” – Howard Schultz
95. “When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.” – Dean Jackson
96. “When a caterpillar spins its cocoon, it goes through a transformative process and then emerges as a butterfly. Similarly, when we go through a practice of meditation and prayer, we loosen our egoic grip on a sense of self that is separate from the Whole and become vehicles of the emergent evolutionary paradigm of love, peace, compassion, wisdom, harmony, and oneness that seeks expression on the planet.” – Michael Beckwith
97. “Fighting has taught me that the caterpillar takes a while to turn into a majestic butterfly.” – Jesse Taylor
98. “Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.” – Bradley Miller
99. “Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem for the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.” – Pat Barker
100. “Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.” –
101. “Never touch a butterfly’s wing with your finger.” – Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
102. “This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it, but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.” – Joseph Conrad
103. “Butterflies used to reproduce on the native plants that grew in our yards before the plants were bulldozed and replaced with lawn. To have butterflies in our future, we need to replace those lost host plants, no if’s, and’s, or but’s. If we do not, butterfly populations will continue to decline with every new house that is built.” – Douglas Tallamy
104. “Be like a butterfly and a flower—beautiful and sought after, yet unassuming and gentle.” – Jarod Kintz
105. “The fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet.” – Paul Erlich
106. “Flowers and butterflies drift in color, illuminating spring.” – Anonymous
107. “Beautiful and graceful, butterflies lift our spirits with their loveliness and lyric flight.” – Gloria B. Schlaepfer
108. “Love is like a butterfly. It goes where it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes.” – Anonymous
109. “It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven. It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another. Without butterflies, the world would soon have few flowers.” – T. Paulus
110. “Butterflies, they are like dream flowers, childhood dreams, which have broken loose from their stalks and escaped into the sunshine.” – Anonymous
111. “The butterfly is a flying flower, the flower a tethered butterfly.” – Ponce Denis Ecouchard Lebrun
112. “The butterfly flits from bloom to bloom, as not to miss one fragrant plume. In her sight exists no garden finale, only paradise of flowered hill and valley.” – K. D’Angelo
113. ”Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.” – Dolly Parton
114. “Butterflies are the most beautiful creatures ever. They should call them beautiflies, don’t you think?” – Richelle E. Goodrich
115. “I have four or five ideas that just keep floating around and I want to kind of just let one. Like a beautiful butterfly, let it land somewhere.” – Gillian Flynn
116. “A cockroach likely has no less brainpower than a butterfly, but we’re quicker to deny it consciousness because it’s a species we dislike.” – Jeffrey Kluger
117. “What if the change you are avoiding is the one that gives you wings?” – Anonymous
118. “Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days.” – Ellen DeGeneres
119. “Among the varied species of insects, butterflies are the most poetic.” – Ana Gerhard
120. “Butterflies are not called butterflies overnight. They have to undergo tons of changes in order to acquire that name.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
121. “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
122. “A butterfly is a miracle, a divine creation that fleets, propelling the caterpillar within, an array of predators it cheats.” – Anonymous
123. “You’ve gotta be a caterpillar before you are a butterfly. Problem is, most people aren’t willing to be a caterpillar.” – Anonymous
124. “Beauty is where the beheld butterfly disappears from sight.” – R.H. Peat
125. “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” – André Gide
126. “Butterflies are like angels kisses sent from heaven.” – Malia Kirk
127. “Nine butterflies appear within an hour, not on the wing but in the word, bringing a message of transformation and hope.” – Carol Lynn Pearson
128. “It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.” – Anonymous
129. “It’s only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.” –
130. “Caterpillars can fly if they just lighten up.” – Scott J. Simmerman Ph.D.
131. “Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.” – George Sand
132. “Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.” – Cornelia Funke
133. “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
134. “Forgetting is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was and there was only ever a butterfly.” – Robert Jackson Bennett
135. “Awaken to the universe’s simple gift of the butterfly. Watch with fascination and joy as a jeweled treasure glides by and gently touches your soul.” – K. D’Angelo
136. “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 50 common years could ever contain.” – John Keats
137. “When I ran, I felt like a butterfly that was free.” – Wilma Rudolph
138. “Butterflies—flowers that fly and all but sing.” –
139. “In mythology throughout the world, the butterfly represents the soul and its journey in this life and the next.” – Tom Frost
140. “What’s a butterfly garden without butterflies?” – Roy Rogers
141. “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.” –
142. “I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.” – Zhuangzi
143. “Getting into drag almost seemed like, not my destiny, but you know how a caterpillar is gonna become a butterfly no matter what? It felt very like that.” – Aquaria
144. “We crush the caterpillars then complain there are no butterflies.” – Anonymous
145. “Proverbs are like butterflies—some are caught and some fly away.” – German proverb
146. “A fallen blossom returning to the bough, I thought—but no, a butterfly.” – Arakida Moritake
147. “Representation is vital, otherwise the butterfly surrounded by a group of moths unable to see itself will keep trying to become the moth—representation.” –
148. “Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.” – Vladimir Nabokov
149. “The great loneliness—like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we too must go through such a time when life as we have known it is over—when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.” – Elizabeth Lesser
