Metamorphosis Quotes

• The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.

  Primo Levi

  Beautiful, Eye, Butterfly

  61 Copy quote

• Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

  Harold Rosenberg

  Struggle, Self, Numbers

  58 Copy quote

• Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae,’ there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.

  Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Butterfly, Thinking, Wings

  82 Copy quote

• It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.

  Henry Miller

  Stressed, Needs, Creation

  Henry Miller (1972). “The Henry Miller reader”, Ayer Co Pub

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Art, Corruption, States

  "Meditations". Book by Marcus Aurelius. Book IX, 19. "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th edition", 1919.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world of art is not a world of immortality but of metamorphosis.

  Andre Malraux

  Art, World, Immortality

  12 Copy quote

• Eventually I saw that the path of the heart requires a full gesture, a degree of abandon that can be terrifying. Only then is it possible to achieve a sparkling metamorphosis.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Heart, Degrees, Gestures

  20 Copy quote

• Everything teaches transition, transference, metamorphosis: therein is human power, in transference, not in creation; & therein is human destiny, not in longevity but in removal. We dive & reappear in new places.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Destiny, Transition, Creation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1973). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1847-1848”, p.76, Harvard University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Butterfly, Self, Meditation

  4 Copy quote

• Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Profound

  10 Copy quote

• The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis.

  Henry Miller

  Art, Good Life, Acceptance

  25 Copy quote

• The human brain is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth.

  Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

  Brain, Earth, Human Body

  53 Copy quote

• We go through these metamorphous just like a caterpillar does before becoming a butterfly and the middle of that metamorphosis it always feels uncomfortable.

  John Assaraf

  Butterfly, Doe, Becoming

  Source: insearchofheroes.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Change itself is what fascinates me. I am drawn, as a moth to the flame, by edge situations, by situations of metamorphosis.

  Annie Proulx

  Flames, Crafts, Situation

  6 Copy quote

• But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Thinking, Crowds, Revolution

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos - the right moment - for a 'metamorphosis of the gods', of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing.

  Carl Jung

  Men, Expression, Greek

  "The Undiscovered Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams". Book by Carl Jung, p. 110, 1958.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Death, Butterfly, Two

  Edgar Allan Poe (2014). “Complete Collection of Edgar Allan Poe - 170+ eBooks (Complete Tales, Poems, Novels, Essays, Miscellaneous, Play)”, p.501, Ageless Reads

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• don’t believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have re- belled long ago! There’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start allover again!

  Anne Frank

  War, Believe, Cutting

  134 Copy quote

• It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact.

  Pablo Picasso

  Dream, Taken, Mean

  "Letters of the Great Artists - From Blake to Pollock". Book by Richard Friedenthal, Hudson, London, p. 256, 1963.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

  Winston Churchill

  Power, Men, Spheres

  9 Copy quote

• people are capable of profound metamorphosis, though unfortunately they rarely avail themselves of this genius, force of habit being an even greater enemy of change than cowardice.

  Robin Morgan

  Change, People, Profound

  Robin Morgan (2014). “Saturday's Child: A Memoir”, p.367, Open Road Media

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• My 'awakened dreams' are about shifts. Thought shifts, reality shifts, gender shifts: one person metamorphoses into another in a world where people fly through the air, heal from mortal wounds. I am playing with my Self, I am playing with the world's soul, I am the dialogue between my Self, and el espirítu del mundo. I change myself, I change the world.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Change, Dream, Reality

  16 Copy quote

• The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life Lesson, Men, Numbers

  21 Copy quote

• I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

  Franz Kafka

  Life, Happenings

  "The Metamorphosis". Book by Franz Kafka, 1915.

  88 Copy quote

  Show source

• The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

  Franz Kafka

  Home, Doors, Heard

  Franz Kafka, Stanley Corngold (1981). “The Metamorphosis”, Bantam Classics

  13 Copy quote

  Show source