Quotes & Sayings About Butterfly

What is the Absolute? Something that appears to us in fleeting experiences
say, through the gentle smile of a beautiful woman, or even through the warm caring smile of a person who may otherwise seem ugly and rude. In such miraculous but extremely fragile moments, another dimension transpires through our reality. As such, the Absolute is easily corroded;it slips all too easily through our fingers and must be handled as carefully as a butterfly — Slavoj Zizek

You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly. — Charles Darwin

I felt rotten. Dead butterfly floating on the surface of the pool. Audible machine hum. Drowned crickets and beetles swirling in the plastic filter baskets. Above, the setting sun flared gaudy and inhuman, blood-red shelves of cloud that suggested end-times footage of catastrophe and ruin: detonations on Pacific atolls, wildlife running before sheets of flame. — Donna Tartt

Life's kind of like a painting. A really bizarre, abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is, is a blur. And you could continue living your life thinking that all it is, is just a blur. But if you really look at it, really see it, focus on it, and use your imagination, life can become so much more. The painting could be of the sea, the sky, people,buildings, a butterfly on a flower, or anything except the blur you were once convinced it was. — Cecelia Ahern

It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill. — Neil Gaiman

Graphic designers are idea embalmers, loving undertakers preserving bits of data like to many butterflies pinned to felt in a jewel box. — Paul Saffo

it is not an easy matter to change suddenly from the butterfly to the busy bee. — Laura Beatty

Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't ( ... ) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories. — Douglas Coupland

Lies are everywhere. Even nature herself lies. What is camouflage, for instance, but a lie? The chameleon disguises itself as a leaf in order to deceive a poor butterfly. He lies to it saying, Don't worry, my dear, can't you see I'm just a very green leaf waving in the breeze, and then he jets out his tongue at six hundred and twenty-five centimeters a second, and eats it. — Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Flower petals in the breeze look like a butterfly flapping its wings. My love for you takes flight like a white orchid blushing pink. — Jarod Kintz

The caterpillar turns to liquid before turning into a butterfly. Liquid. Thus washing away any speck of his caterpillar self as he lies completely vulnerable to his environment in his chrysalis shell. One good solid gust of wind and the caterpillars boned. — The Hippie

As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion. — Butterfly McQueen

Don't go chasing after butterflies, when everything you want is right by your side. — Norah Jones

To not use a talent to the best of your ability is to stifle the thing that makes you most special. It is like plucking the wings off a butterfly. — Fennel Hudson

The beginning of love is all about the butterflies, but the end of it is when you can't get out of bed in the morning. — Taylor Swift

I am a flower on the tree we call the universe. My mind is dancing with joy like butterfly. — Debasish Mridha

The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly's bloom. — Virginia Woolf

Fuck me." I said it so softly a butterfly wouldn't have heard me. "Say it again. But this time, own it. — C.D. Reiss

Like the enotmologist in search of colorful butterflies, my attention has chased in the gardens of the grey matter cells with delicate and elegant shapes, the mysterious butterflies of the soul, whose beating of wings may one day reveal to us the secrets of the mind. — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

I get butterflies just like everyone else. So I meditate for at least ten minutes before I perform. I breathe in and out slowly for ten minutes, and that literally helps me slow my heart rate and relax. — Matthew Moy

Race is the great taboo in our society. We are afraid to talk about it. White folks fear their unspoken views will be deemed racist. People of color are filled with sorrow and rage at unrighted wrongs. Drowning in silence, we are brothers and sisters drowning each other. Once we decide to transform ourselves from fearful caterpillars into courageous butterflies, we will be able to bridge the racial gulf and move forward together towards a bright and colorful future. — Eva Paterson

A child her wayward pencil drew
On margins of her book;
Garlands of flower, dancing elves,
Bud, butterfly, and brook,
Lessons undone, and plum forgot,
Seeking with hand and heart
The teacher whom she learned to love
Before she knew t'was Art. — Louisa May Alcott

Demanding respect is like chasing a butterfly. Chase it, and you'll never catch it. Sit still, and it may light on your shoulder. — Max Lucado

There was a small woven basket waiting on his desk
the next day, still smelling like warmed-from-the-oven
sin. A note was attached written with the words
"Have a good day!" A drawing of a tiny dog chasing
a butterfly completed the absurdity.
He stood in front of his desk, just staring at it and
the basket for a full minute. Asps didn't smell like
baked items, but the latter were no less dangerous.
He tented the edge of the cloth cover with his
smallest finger. Three fruit tarts lay inside.
Poisoned most likely. — Anne Mallory

Desperation will drive you to do things you know will never make you whole again and even to lose the very thing you're desperate for. — Laura Miller

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. — Samuel Beckett

A trail twists through the stone cliffs toward Arques. At its end lies a broken man, his soul lifting away from his body, fluttering on a butterfly's wing, as fragile as a dream. — Julie Christine Johnson

Peace is in selfless caring
Peace is in true understanding
Peace is in undeserved kindness
Peace is in joyful forgiveness
Peace is in innocent trust
Peace is in becoming just
Peace is in a dancing butterfly
Peace is in a clear starry sky
Peace is a child's loving kiss
Peace is a life's pure bliss — Debasish Mridha

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

Within hours, tweetted piece of information you've just doled out has become a monsoon, a hurricane of tangible energy that is literally circulating the world. It's helped me sense the undeniable truth of quantum consciousness, the whole butterfly effect. I witness it daily. Being witness to it not only makes me come alive, it enables me to maintain hope. — Ian Somerhalder

It's very tough for me to focus. I'm like: 'Look, something shiny! No, focus. Oh, there goes a butterfly!' — Gabby Douglas

And I wonder if the caterpillar at the threshold of death ever knew that she would get metamorphosed into a butterfly that she could fly. — Chirag Tulsiani

The joy in catching butterflies is the joy of capturing - for an instant - utter beauty. The satisfaction of being able to let it go is immense. — Ruth Rudner

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. — Muhammad Ali

Isn't it strange how often your butt gets all the instructions?" Gerry said conversationally to Mason, "Mine gets hustled all over the place, it's quite the social butterfly. — Rolf

The ball was coming down like a butterfly with sore feet. — Jamie Redknapp

The doctors keep coming around and pulling up my eyelids and waving around a flashlight. They are rough and hurried, like they don't consider eyelids worthy of gentleness. It makes you realize how little in life we touch one another's eyes. Maybe your parents will hold an eyelid up to get out a piece of dirt, or maybe your boyfriend will kiss your eyelids, light as a butterfly, just before you drift off to sleep. But eyelids are not like elbows or knees or shoulders, parts of the body accustomed to being jostled. — Gayle Forman

Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots. — Vernor Vinge

With cropping, a new integrity appears and winning abstractions flutter up like butterflies. You can afford to be critical, discriminating, innocent, open-minded, charmed, beguiled or bamboozled. — Robert Genn

It's a Magril - a bird that's native to Gillikin Country. It spends half its life as a beetle, and when it's an adult, it goes to sleep for a year and wakes up as this majestic creature."
"Kind of like a butterfly."
"Kind of like you," he said. — Danielle Paige

After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of the flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous, and spicy delights of the soil. — Karel Capek

The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity. — George Carlin

I've always loved butterflies, because they remind us that it's never too late to transform ourselves. — Drew Barrymore

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

Whereas all humans have approximately the same life expectancy the life expectancy of stars varies as much as from that of a butterfly to that of an elephant. — George Gamow

I'd be a butterfly; living a rover, Dying when fair things are fading away. — Thomas Haynes Bayly

We humans think we are smart, but an orchid, for example,
knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers,
and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell.
Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all.
We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail
and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree.
The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hanh — Thich Nhat Hanh

I want you to have this." He extended his hand. On his palm sat the beautiful butterfly he had carved. Silver spots on the wings glinted in the sunlight, and a silver chain hung from a small hole drilled into its body.
Valek looped the necklace around my neck. "When I carved this statue, I was thinking about you. Delicate in appearance, but with a strength unnoticed at first glance." His eyes met mine. — Maria V. Snyder

Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly. — D.H. Lawrence

Each smallest act of kindness, reverberates across great distances and spans of time
affecting lives unknown to the one who's generous spirit, was the source of this good echo. Because kindness is passed on and grows each time it's passed until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage, years later, and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each expression of hatred, each act of evil. — Dean Koontz

The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home. — Winston Churchill

I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn't want to go on! — Robert Plant

Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. Thus the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar, perhaps it may in turn so entirely forget it was a butterfly that is becomes a fish. — Soren Kierkegaard

Lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then became a calculator company, then a computer company. Apple has been sidelined by Microsoft in the PC business. You've got to reinvent the company to do some other thing, like other consumer products or devices. You've got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis. — Walter Isaacson

Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are ... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; his two-fold security. — Tom Stoppard

The Cabbage White
The butterfly, a cabbage-white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has- who knows so well as I?-
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the acrobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift. — Robert Graves

Beholding the flash drive that may contain so many keys, intuition dawns: I've always been a butterfly trapped in Donovan's net. My heart knows Donovan and I traveled together before, yet I've never allowed myself to think of the logistics. If the more I pull back, the more I crave his enclosure, what happens if I learn my deprivation has been for centuries, or even millenniums? Is being an old soul why I have always felt and sounded older than my years? Why do
I have the passions I do? How did I become me? — Diane Rinella

Once there was a gypsy queen who wore on her wrist a chain of six lucky charms - a golden crown, a silver horse, a butterfly caught in amber, a cat's eye shell, a bolt of lightning forged from the heart of a falling star, and the flower of the rue plant, herb of grace. The queen gave each of her six children one of the charms as their lucky talisman, but ever since the chain of charms was broken, the gypsies had been dogged with misfortune. — Kate Forsyth

Then the rudder and elevator finally come to life, swinging her nose up, and she's left the earth - arrow straight. A butterfly after all. — Paula McLain

A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac. — Laura Miller

The three states of the caterpillar, larva, and butterfly have, since the time of the Greek poets, been applied to typify the human being,
its terrestrial form, apparent death, and ultimate celestial destination. — Humphry Davy

I must brave the interior of the most tawdry and literally trumpery tower of them all ... the Trump Taj Mahal. For taking the name of the priceless mausoleum of Agra, one of the beauties and wonders of the world, for that alone Donald Trump should be stripped naked and whipped with scorpions along the boardwalk.- It is as if a giant toad has raped a butterfly. — Stephen Fry

The dirigible came to rest as lightly as a butterfly on an egg, if the butterfly were to stumble a bit and list heavily to one side and the egg to take on the peculiar characteristics of Scotland in winter: more soggy and more gray than one would think possible. — Gail Carriger

However, at the end of the night I saw Nick stomping out to the car park, obviously in a terrible mood. They take their lives so seriously, these young people. "Just appreciate the fact that you can stomp so energetically," I wanted to say to him. I'd pay a million dollars to be Alice and Elisabeth's age again for just one day. I'd dance like Olivia's butterfly and bite into crisp green apples and run across hot sand into the surf, and I'd walk, as far as I wanted, wherever I wanted, in big loping, leaping strides, with my head held high and my lungs filling with air. — Liane Moriarty

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man." The — David Eagleman

All the butterflies and cockyolybirds would fly past me. — Charles Kingsley

I watch her with loving sadness as she dulls her shine to please others. Will this butterfly ever soar? Will she continue to pretend she can't fly? Her greatest life awaits this decision. — Steve Maraboli

His eyes were so inviting that for a moment, everything in me wanted to reveal this part of myself, as though the truth was a butterfly, wings fluttering, green and gold and quivering to be free. I was a closed book, a rolled map, a dark territory, uncharted; I was surprised by my urgency, but after all, to be known was to exist. — Heidi Heilig

The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly. — Imogene Coca

Gracefully and gratefully accept the changes in our lives as casually and flexibly like a butterfly does." ~ Angelica Hopes, Odyssey of a Heart, Home of a Soul — Angelica Hopes

Doing voiceovers is so great because even though many people would think it's just your voice, you really do use all your physicality. I've done everything from playing a butterfly to Alice in Wonderland when she's 10 feet tall, so it allows you to be an actor and build new characters. — Ashley Bell

There is a difference between our wisdom and nature's simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

I'm so drastically independent; I don't tend to flourish in relationships. — Julia Butterfly Hill

All my life I've swam in the loo butterfly style. — Faina Ranevskaya

Liraz may have captured Ziri's soul like a butterfly in a bottle, but that was only a formality. It was already hers.
And, clearly, judging by the state of her laugh-sobbing in Karou's arms, hers was his, too. — Laini Taylor

...he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu. — Inio Asano

I've got two bikes that get me everywhere I need to go. And public transportation. — Julia Butterfly Hill

Forty years does not bear testimony to the success of a marriage; it's a testimony to friendship. Their children are also a testament to that friendship. You can raise your fist clenched tight in anger, or you can open your hand and wait for a butterfly, a ladybird, some morning dew, a zephyr, or a friend. — Christopher Rees

I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name. — John Le Carre

I must say the Linux community is a lot nicer than the Unix community. A negative comment on Unix would warrent death threats. With Linux, it is like stirring up a nest of butterflies. — Kenneth P. Thompson

Every lifelong couple has their own variants of the butterfly dream! — Newton Lee

The possibilities for immortality are endless. Here you sit reading these words, a butterfly resting on a flower! — Frederick Lenz

Running is in my blood-the adrenaline flows before the races, the love/hate of butterflies in your stomach. — Marcus O'Sullivan

Doesn't anything matter to you?'
'Survival,' I said, but even that sounded untrue now. 'I guess.'
'That's not much.'
I painted a butterfly in Claire's room. Swallowtail. Another, cabbage white. 'I haven't gotten any farther than that. — Janet Fitch

Again and again as we discussed Lolita in that class, our discussions were colored by my students' hidden personal sorrows and joys. Like tearstains on a letter, these forays into the hidden and the personal shaded all our discussions of Nabokov. And more and more I thought of that butterfly; what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim and jailer. — Azar Nafisi

Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Teraza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and a lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below. — Milan Kundera

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works. — Alma Gluck

What is charm, it is not a moral quality.. it is not intellectual for no man by much thinking is able to add a grain of it to his personality. One either has it or has it not, it cannot be acquired or even cultivated. It is not physical even.. it seems to be added to the human personality, an aura, a glow, the gold dust upon a butterfly's wing, the bloom upon a peach. — Flora Thompson

Treachery is always a hairy caterpillar bred of a small butterfly called envy, no matter how lofty the principles involved. — Fazil Iskander

Self-realization is a strange term. You don't actually realize your 'self'. If anything, you go away. The caterpillar enters the cocoon of meditation: A butterfly emerges - metamorphosis. — Frederick Lenz

If the butterfly wings its way to the sweet light that attracts it, it's only becasue it doesn't know that the fire can consume it. — Giordano Bruno

Philomena spun a tale about a butterfly that turned back into a caterpillar - saying that the butterfly would rather live in the cocoon for years than fly under the sun for only a few short days.
"Butterflies don't last," said Philomena solemnly. — Anya Allyn

Hope is like a butterfly that alights gently in your heart. — Chrissie Anthony

Listen to yourself You really expect me to believe that my brother is some kind of pixie with glitter dust and butterfly wings."

"Don't be stupid " Rob said mildly. "You have no idea what you're talking about. You're thinking 'Tinker Bell' which is a typical human response to the word faery. The real fey aren't like that at all. — Julie Kagawa

My butterfly dress was visible on the washroom floor, bent and shredded wings and all. Cheeks hot, I remember what he'd suggested before someone shot him.
His eyes found the dress too. I was teasing about that. Unless you were looking forward to it. Then I meant every word. — Jodi Meadows

In flew influence, and out fluttered humility. Be like a butterfly and a flower - beautiful and sought after, yet unassuming and gentle. — Jarod Kintz

Fractal litigation, whereby the flapping of a butterfly's wings on one side of the world resulted in a massive compensation claim on the other. — Steve Aylett

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. — Rabindranath Tagore

I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Name you Proginoskes.
I fill you with Naming.
Be!
Be, butterfly and behemoth,
be galaxy and grasshopper,
star and sparrow,
you matter,
you are,
be!
Be caterpillar and comet,
Be porcupine and planet,
sea sand and solar system,
sing with us,
dance with us,
rejoice with us,
for the glory of creation,
seagulls and seraphim
angle worms and angel host,
chrysanthemum and cherubim.
(O cherubim.)
Be!
Sing for the glory
of the living and the loving
the flaming of creation
sing with us
dance with us
be with us.
Be!"
- Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door — Madeleine L'Engle

Sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and the weather turns out fine. — Johnny Rich