Butterfly Quotes

I can't stand to see a living thing in pain, least of all Evander. The nuns who raised me said I'd been that way since birth. Trying to put the wings back on a trampled butterfly. Tending the weakest plants in their garden. That's what made me so well suited for walking in the Deadlands, they said. My love of life. ~ Sarah Glenn Marsh

A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures? ~ Ivan Turgenev

We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's case held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped round two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief-case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam-jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England. ~ Gerald Durrell

The butterfly lures us not only because he is beautiful, but because he is transitory. The caterpillar is uglier, but in him we can regard the better joy of becoming. ~ Cynthia Ozick

He reached for her and she went willingly into his arms. He kissed her deeply, feeling the waves of shivers washing through her. Even as his mouth claimed hers, his hands were everywhere. Tracing the length of her spine, squeezing the curve of her butt, sliding up her hips to her waist.

There was a confidence to Duncan, a sureness that allowed her to relax. His strength made her want to surrender, because being around him was inherently safe.
<...>'Don't make me hit you. I have a great jab."

"You have a sad excuse for a jab. It would be like being attacked by a butterfly.'

"I was calm and rational," she told him.

"You were a girl. Admit it."

"I could hit you right now."

"You could and no one would notice. Especially not me. ~ Susan Mallery

Big events, small, mundane moments of the day–it doesn't matter; the past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it. ~ Laura Miller

We are like caterpillars, we die so we can be reborn in a higher state. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

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

Love is like a buffalo with butterfly wings, and I'm just the humble man in the jetpack trying to shoot it down with a bow and arrow. ~ Jarod Kintz

Wolf took Scarlet's hands into his, as tenderly as he would pick up an injured butterfly, and slid the band onto her finger. His voice was rough and wavering as he recited - "I, Ze'ev Kesley, do hereby claim you, Scarlet Benoit, as my wife and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything." He smiled down at her, his eyes swimming with emotion. Scarlet returned the look, and though Wolf's expression teetered between proud and bashful, Scarlet's face contained nothing but joy. "You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one.
Scarlet took the second ring - a significantly larger version of the same unadorned band - and pressed it onto Wolf's finger. "I, Scarlet Benoit, do hereby claim you, Ze'ev Kesley, as my husband and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything. You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one."
Wolf folded his hands around hers. From where she sat, Cinder could see that he was shaking.
Kai grinned. "By the power given to me by the people of Earth, under the laws of the Earthen Union and as witnessed by those gathered here today, I do now pronounce you husband and wife." He spread his hands in invitation. "You may kiss your - "
Wolf wrapped his arms around Scarlet's waist, lifting her off the floor, and kissed her before Kai could finish. Or maybe she kissed him. It seemed mutual, as her hands wound through his dis ~ Marissa Meyer

All you really need to do is focus on building quality relationships instead of trying to be a social butterfly at every social gathering. ~ S.J. Scott

A butterfly flitting from flower to flower ever remains mine, I lose the one that is netted by me. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me a thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you!
Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?" "Catch butterflies ~ Charles Bukowski

On sunny days of summer,
I am indeed the butterfly;
And like the ancient drummer,
I rhythm straight towards the sky ... ~ Stephan Attia

A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing. ~ Lauren Oliver

In almost thirty years of walking around on the grass of the world, she couldn't recall having spent two minutes alone with a butterfly. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Now that the day is almost done, the world of glass recedes, the butterfly threat diminishes. I imagine that we're both here in this bed, that my invisible body is nestled against hers. We are breathing at the same pace, our chests rising and falling in unison. We have no need to whisper, because at this distance, all we need is thought. Our eyes close at the same time. We feel the same sheets against us, the same night. Our breath slows together. We split into different versions of the same dreams. Sleep takes us at the exact same time. ~ David Levithan

I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round. ~ Karl Kraus

Mom had just gotten back from Sydney, and she had brought me an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, mounted in a frame filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn't see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

The creative life of the commercial photographer is like the life of a butterfly. Very seldom do we see a photographer who is really productive for more than eight or ten years. ~ Alexey Brodovitch

An experimental science is supposed to perform experiments that find generalities. It's not just supposed to tally up a long list of individual cases and their unique life histories. That's butterfly collecting. ~ Richard Lewontin

It's like watching some rare exotic butterfly. Pleasant to watch, but you can't touch it, for as soon as you do, it dies, it's brilliance gone. ~ Haruki Murakami

Butterflies are very interesting. Here these things are little grubs for a while. And then they go into a little coffin. There they are in a sarcophagus, and then they come out and dance with the angels. ~ Roger Tory Peterson

I had the strange desire for a giant butterfly net to catch whatever was out there, as if it could be captured so easily. ~ Courtney King Walker

She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me. ~ Gayle Forman

With Naoko gone, I went to sleep on the sofa. I hadn't intended to do so, but I fell into the kind of deep sleep I had not in a long time, filled with a sense of Naoko's presence. In the kitchen were the dishes Naoko ate from, in the bathroom was the toothbrush Naoko used, and in the bedroom was the bed in which Naoko slept. Sleeping soundly in this apartment of hers, I wrung the fatigue from every cell of my body, drop by drop. I dreamed of a butterfly dancing in the half-light. ~ Haruki Murakami

When someone comes to you with big dreams, don't be too quick to belittle their ambition and dreams. Inspire and help them in any way you can. Even the beautiful butterfly was once a caterpillar. ~ Rita Zahara

And just when the darkness
became too much to bear
and the struggle too hard,
the light broke through
and the caterpillar emerged
a butterfly
delicate but unbroken,
wild and gentle,
finally free to spread its lovely wings
and fly away on the wind. ~ L.R. Knost

I love the needle poke, the red pop/
and when an arc of red drops,/
quivering and shaped like wings/
beg me to lick them off,/
quickly savoring your shoulder/
newly marked with a nearly invisible/
but indelible butterfly ~ Rachel Dacus

I get terrible butterflies. Before I go onstage, I'll have to freak out for five minutes. I scream. It seems to help! ~ Josh Groban

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 am the cockroach, I am my leg, I am my hair, I am the section of brightest light on the wall plaster - I am every Hellish piece of myself - life is so pervasive in me that if they divide me in pieces like a lizard, the pieces will keep on shaking and writhing. I am the silence etched on a wall, and the most ancient butterfly flutters in and looks at me: just the same as always. From birth to death is what I call human in myself, and I shall never actually die. But this is not eternity, it is condemnation.
How opulent this silence is. It is the accumulation of centuries. It is the silence of the cockroach looking. The world looks at itself in me. Everything looks at everything, everything experiences the other; in this desert things know things. ~ Clarice Lispector

I'm about as intimidating as a butterfly. ~ Dan Howell

Dominique Bauby (1997), who was the editor in chief of the French Elle magazine, has authored a small and extremely sensitive and articulated work, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. His wording is amazingly precise. Bauby suffered a cerebrovascular accident to his brain stem in December 1995. The result was "locked-in ~ Susan Roos

We don't look at the sky anymore, instead we stare at boxes that keeps us captive; we don't walk barefoot any more, we refuse to kiss the earth with our feet, we keep busy worrying and fearing, we exist and die, like robots we work and consume. We ignore the beauty of a butterfly and the power of the eagle, we have forgotten the scent of flowers, we are too busy to enjoy nature, we are plastic most of the time; we live together but we do not connect, we are asleep.
I want to cleanse myself of societies' noise, walk barefoot, and kiss the earth with my feet, I want look at the sky, and like my ancestors, I want to feel free. I want to rejoice of who I am, and what I will become. ~ Martin Suarez

Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf! ~ Laini Taylor

Even if everybody is looking at the same light bulb, the unique composition of an individual will dictate how they interpret and see things. Some people will only see things with their left eye (mind/moon), while others will use only their right (heart/sun). Some people are completely void of light and repel it immediately. For instance, a beetle will chase after an opening of light, while a cockroach will scatter at a crack of it. How are we different than the insects? Nobody is purely good or purely evil. Most of us are in-between. There are moths that explore the day and butterflies that play at night. Polarity is an integral part of nature - human or not human. ~ Suzy Kassem

Some things must remain the same in order for the universe to flow properly. One pebble dashed out across the ocean leaves a lifetime of ripples. They call it the butterfly effect. ~ Louise Mullins

Far from such din, when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have butterfly hearing. ~ Jean-Dominique Bauby

I just woke up and found a large butterfly on me. When did that happen? ~ Harry Styles

The thunder tiger looked at her like an avalanche looks at a butterfly. ~ Jay Kristoff

Here, Fridays were dedicated to the two Bs–Beach and Boats. ~ Laura Miller

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. ~ Ilona Andrews

A caterpillar must endure a season of isolation before it turns into a butterfly. Embrace the time you have alone, it will only make you stronger. ~ Steven Aitchison

Flowers belong to Fairyland: the flowers and the birds and the butterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age
the only perfectly beautiful things on earth
joyous, innocent, half divine
useless, say they who are wiser than God. ~ Ouida

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

How wonderful it must be, I thought, to be able to just spread your wings whenever you like without someone following you around trying to swat you out of the sky. ~ Gina Holmes

Why use a sledgehammer when a butterfly net will suffice? ~ Thea Harrison

How does one become a butterfly?' she asked pensively.

'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.'

'You mean to die?' asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.

'Yes and No,' he answered.

'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will still live. ~ Trina Paulus

But what can happen over time is this: You wake up one day and realize that you have put yourself back together completely differently. That you are whole, finally, and strong – but you are now a different shape, a different size. This sort of change - the change that occurs when you sit inside your own pain - it's revolutionary. When you let yourself die, there is suddenly one day: new life. You are Different. New. And no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot fit into your old life anymore. You are like a snake trying to fit into old, dead skin, or a butterfly trying to crawl back into the cocoon, or new wine trying to pour itself back into an old wineskin. This new you is equal parts undeniable and terrifying.

Because you just do not fit. And suddenly you know that. And you have become a woman who doesn't ignore her knowing. Who doesn't pretend she doesn't know. Because pretending makes you sick. And because you never promised yourself an easy life, but you did promise yourself a true one. You did promise – back when you were putting yourself back together – that you'd never betray you again. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

There is no help for you, outside yourself; You are the creator of the universe. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory. ~ Gary Zukav

All around us are the miracles of God. A tiny seed grows into a peepul tree. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly! ~ Dada J.P. Vaswani

Your facial lips and the butterfly lips of your vagina are connected by a fine invisible circuit. When you take a hard cock into your mouth, the feeling of pleasure zips in pulsing waves down through your body and rings the bell of your clitoris. The vulva swells with blood and the sensation is carnal, exquisite, the essence of femininity. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Today I offer a prayer of forgiveness:
forgive the pettiness of my ingratitude ...
the absence of profound thankfulness. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

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

Other people might want a Ferrari, but I wanted a butterfly house. I built it together with a blacksmith. We designed it together. ~ Andre Rieu

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters. ~ Carl Sandburg

...a cyclamen that looks like a flight of butterflies, frozen for a single, exquisite moment in the white heart of Time... ~ Beverley Nichols

We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees the vacated cocoon & the liberated butterfly. ~ Max Lucado

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

I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies! ~ Butterfly McQueen

If you have WANNA, you can do ANYTHING!! - The Caterpillar That Wouldn't Change ~ Nancy S. Mure

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

The world is ruled by butterflies adding to their weapon piles. Imagine what your taxes buy. We hardly ever try. ~ Sting

My butterflies are still going strong. I just hope they are flying in formation. ~ Larry Mize

Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies. It creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation. ~ Stephanie Pace Marshall

In whose wonder do you get to participate today? ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

representation
is vital
otherwise the butterfly
surrounded by a group of moths
unable to see itself
will keep trying to become the moth
- representation ~ Rupi Kaur

Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Perfect love was that kind of love that made no sense but made everything else make sense somehow. It was raw and unscripted, turbulent and slightly unpredictable. ~ Laura Miller

I have discovered that our great favorite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman ... with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers ... ~ Mary Russell Mitford

From the moment of birth, every human being wants to discover happiness and avoid suffering. No differences in our culture or our education or our religion affect this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire joy and contentment. But so often these feelings are fleeting and hard to find, like a butterfly that lands on us and then flutters away. "The ~ Dalai Lama XIV

In order to butterfly kiss, does it require caterpillar lips? ~ Josh Stern

Caterpillar sheds it's skin to find a butterfly within. ~ Donovan

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

I was a caterpillar, my many limbs held tight to my body, wrapped up in a cocoon. He paved the way, eased me from a small and ugly life to a beautiful one. The transition had been painful at times, but never more than it would be to leave him. But that was the path of a butterfly-to fly away from the one who had made her. ~ Skye Warren

If that moment had been a real thing, it would've been a butterfly, flapping and fluttering toward the sun. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

There: the white butterfly has crossed the whole valley, and from the reader's book has flown here, to light on the page I am writing. ~ Italo Calvino

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

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~ Maya Angelou

The reason we shot it was that the script was geared to Las Vegas and it was something commercial that we wanted to have in the can in case Butterfly was a success and we needed a follow-up. ~ Pia Zadora

After all, color in itself has no color - it's simply a construction of the mind: a sensation, like the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly and the smell of honeysuckle. ~ Jasper Fforde

My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The reason I keep acting is that it fuels some kind of passion in me, but the day that those butterflies stop, is the day that I'm gonna quit because I could care less about the magazines or being famous or the money or the awards. ~ Shailene Woodley

I felt a different kind of loss in that moment. It reminded me of how a cocoon must feel when the butterfly emerges. Having nurtured and protected a thing for so long. Only to be left behind one day, a hollow shell, when it suddenly takes flight and never looks back. ~ J. Walker

Innocence, a fleeting thing
Like the blossoms of the spring
Like the pretty butterfly
Dancing now, but soon to die.
Not for long that wondering gaze
All too soon those baby days -
Are gone. ~ Bernie Morris

He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself. He stayed inside for more than two weeks. Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out and ... he was a beautiful butterfly! ~ Eric Carle

Which was why he reflexively turned when a flash of iridescence caught his eye. His first thought was: Morpho rhetenor Helena. The extraordinary tropical butterfly with wings of shifting colors: blues, lavenders, greens.
It proved to be a woman's skirt.
The color was blue, but by the light of the legion of overhead candles, he saw purples and even greens shivering in its weave. A bracelet of pale stones winked around one wrist, a circlet banded her dark head. The chandelier struck little beams from that, too.
She's altogether too shiny for a woman, he decided, and began to turn away.
Which was when she tipped her face up into the light.
Everything stopped. The beat of his heart, the pump of his lungs, the march of time.
Seconds later, thankfully, it all resumed. Much more violently than previously.
And then absurd notions roman-candled in his mind.
His palms ached to cradle her face - it was a kitten's face, broad and fair at the brow, stubborn at the chin. She had kitten's eyes, too: large and a bit tilted and surely they weren't actually the azure of calm southern seas? Surely he, Miles Redmond, hadn't entertained such a florid thought? Her eyebrows were wicked: fine, slanted, very dark. Her hair was probably brown, but it was as though he'd never learned the word "brown."
Burnished. Silk. Copper. Azure. Delicate. Angel. Hallelujah. Suddenly these were the only words he knew. ~ Julie Anne Long

I have finally reverted the publishing rights for my Cocoon Trilogy back to me and, for the first time, e-published the final book - Butterfly: Tomorrow's Children. Cocoon, the movie and the book, was only the beginning. ~ David Saperstein

For me, my rule in this industry is I've got to listen to my butterflies. So if I got butterflies, then those are the scripts I go after. ~ Shailene Woodley

There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality. ~ Ellen Bass

Like butterflies, we evolve; but as Beings of Light we continuously evolve when we are fully present. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life. ~ Richard Jefferies

I'm not a real crazy social butterfly - and once I realised that and I accepted it, I started to realise how many people weren't accepting of that. ~ Hayley Williams

You look like a butterfly that's just flown in from the garden, Hunt said softly. ~ Lisa Kleypas

My ice-cream is melting just as quickly as Danny's and is dripping down my chin, across my wrist, and onto my thigh. I laugh, throwing my head back and covering my eyes so as not to be blinded by happiness, and it is in this moment of weightlessness that I am suddenly aware of the lightest touch on my skin, like the wings of a butterfly. It flutters against my thigh then lingers on my wrist, but before its delicate wings reach my face, I force my eyes open and see only fragments: pink lips, a tanned cheek, the features and lines of a face silhouetted against the bright sunlight. My nostrils draw in his scent for the very first time and it is so strong that he is not just next to me but intimately close. His smell instantly takes me prisoner, overpowering me to such an extent that I have forgotten who and where I am.
I know that, moments before, Alex was using his lips and tongue to clean the melted ice-cream off my thigh and wrist and inadvertently treating me to the most ecstatic experience of my life. My body and mind are adrift in a sea of bliss, the sounds of the park suddenly fade away, and the world and everyone in it cease to exist. All I can see is a blindingly bright light and all I can feel are a man's moist lips touching mine. Alex's hot, passionate mouth is kissing me greedily as if there is finally enough air; as if he had been suffocating, but now he can breathe.
I know that a kiss like this is neither flirting nor dating and can sense with every fibr ~ Victoria Sobolev

Dada is not modern at all, it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada puts an artificial sweetness onto things, a snow of butterflies coming out of a conjurer's skull. Dada is stillness and does not understand the passions. ~ Tristan Tzara

Ron: Why spiders? Why couldn't it be follow the butterflies? ~ J.K. Rowling

Now, you and I both know that I'll wait a lifetime for you – remember, Butterfly Weeds never give up – so take your time down there. And tonight, as you watch that big, orange sun disappear into the earth and your world gradually grow dark, I'll help God turn on the stars, and I'll wait for my dawn – when you return to me, Julia Stephens.

I love you, My Butterfly. You'll always be my endless song.

Love always and forever,
Your one and only Butterfly Weed, Will ~ Laura Miller