Butterfly Quotes - Page 10

• People are like moths. First they are ugly and awkward, until they break out of their shell and become a beautiful butterfly.

  Drew Barrymore

  Beautiful, People, Awkward

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• Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Philosophy, Wish, Caterpillars

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• A soft Sea washed around the House A Sea of Summer Air And rose and fell the magic Planks That sailed without a care — For Captain was the Butterfly For Helmsman was the Bee And an entire universe For the delighted crew.

  Emily Dickinson

  Summer, Air, Sea

  Emily Dickinson, Frances Schoonmaker Bolin (1994). “Emily Dickinson”, p.36, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• The Caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly

  Timothy Leary

  Drug, Caterpillars

  Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, George A. Koopman (1988). “Neuropolitique”, New Falcon Publications

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• In this sense love is of a different order to any other phenomenon, for it may be both an event and a sign of that invisible mechanism I spoke of before; perhaps the finest sign, the most certain. In it’s throes we need neither luck nor science. We are the wheel, and the man who profits by it. We are the star, and the darkness it pierces. We are the butterfly, brief and beautiful.

  Clive Barker

  Beautiful, Stars, Love Is

  "Galilee". Book by Clive Barker, February 3, 1999.

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• He well knew his mind's natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose--indeed, he called it his "butterfly mind.

  Eric Metaxas

  Mind, Purpose, Next

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• And when I was angry, when I was younger, I was in a cocoon. Now I'm a beautiful, black butterfly.

  Tracy Morgan

  Beautiful, Black, Cocoons

  "Tracy Morgan On Being 'The New Black'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 22, 2009.

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• I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Believe, Swimming, Soul

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• My loneliness...still comes over me sometimes...It's a liminal, lost sensation of having wandered wide, endless boulevards, among rows of orange trees, winter butterflies, seasons reversed and out of order, dogs barking from behind fences meant to keep out intruders. It's not the place that impoverishes me but I who bring my own sense of poverty, of loss, to the place. It's a sense of near nothingness, as though I were not so much a blank slate as an erased chalkboard, still bearing illegible smudges of smoothed-over writing.

  Marco Roth

  Dog, Loneliness, Writing

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• For years The National has been labeled as a gloomy kind of rock bandI think mostly because of Matt’s deep baritone voice, which even if he is singing about unicorns and butterflies, he just sounds sad most of the time.

  Bryce Dessner

  Thinking, Rocks, Years

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• 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

  Integrity, Growth, Tadpoles

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• We gon' float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. AH! Rumble, young man rumble! AH!

  Drew Bundini Brown

  Men, Boxing, Bees

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• the cold winds of insecurity... hadn't shredded the dreamy chrysalis of his childhood. He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he still hoped, probably, in a butterfly's unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting; that is, they ache until they atrophy.

  Harold Brodkey

  Spring, Wind, Wings

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• Some people are as fragile as butterflies and sensitive and it’s your responsibility not to destroy them. Just because you can

  Marisha Pessl

  Responsibility, People, Sensitive

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.201, Penguin

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• It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.

  Pema Chodron

  Knowing, Laughing, Ego

  Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.12, Shambhala Publications

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• The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Stars, Eye, Exclamation Marks

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• To Beatrice- My love flew like a butterfly Until death swooped down like a bat As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said: 'That's the end of that.

  Daniel Handler

  Bats, Montana, Poet

  "A Series of Unfortunate Events #4: The Miserable Mill". Book by Daniel Handler, www.theguardian.com. April 5, 2000.

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• April's air stirs in Willow-leaves...a butterfly Floats and balances

  Matsuo Basho

  Spring, Air, Balance

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• Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive. As soon as he touched her, he wondered how he’d gone this long without doing it. He rubbed his thumb through her palm and up her fingers, and was aware of her every breath.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Hands, Long, Gone

  Rainbow Rowell (2013). “Eleanor & Park”, p.71, Macmillan

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• Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly...

  Zhuangzi

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• The morning woods were utterly new. A strong yellow light pooled beneath the trees; my shadow appeared and vanished on the path, since a third of the trees I walked under were still bare, a third spread a luminous haze wherever they grew, and another third blocked the sun with new, whole leaves. The snakes were out - I saw a bright, smashed one on the path - and the butterflies were vaulting and furling about; the phlox was at its peak, and even the evergreens looked greener, newly created and washed.

  Annie Dillard

  Strong, Morning, Snakes

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• 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 Žižek

  Beautiful, Caring, Reality

  Slavoj Žižek (2001). “The Fragile Absolute Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?”, p.128, Verso

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• Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf!

  Laini Taylor

  Stomach, Gross

  Laini Taylor (2011). “Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.49, Hachette UK

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• For the butterfly, mating and propagation involve the sacrifice of life, for the human being, the sacrifice of beauty.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Sex, Sacrifice, Mating

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• Oh, God. I'm in big trouble. Because I'm staring. I can't keep my eyes from ogling his chiseled triceps and biceps and every other "eps ' he has. The butterflies in my stomach have just multiplied tenfold as my wandering gaze meets his.

  Simone Elkeles

  Eye, Biceps, Trouble

  Simone Elkeles (2011). “Perfect Chemistry”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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