Kendrick Lamar
Rapper, Songwriter
"Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same."
Butterfly quotes
Butterfly
592 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Henry David Thoreau
Writer, Philosopher
"I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. 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."
Jimi Hendrix
Musician, Guitarist
"Butterflies and zebras And moonbeams and fairy tales That's all she ever thinks about Riding with the wind."
Luther Burbank
Horticulturist
"Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education."
Zhuangzi
Philosopher
"Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably 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 I am a man."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside butterfly — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Butterfly quotes (page 1 of 30)
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"The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted."
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"and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful."
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"Come, butterfly It's late- We've miles to go together."
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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."
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"Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile."
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"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."
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"Butterflies are self propelled flowers."
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"There is a tiny yellow daffodil, The butterfly can see it from afar, Although one summer evening's dew could fill Its little cup twice over, ere the star Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, And be no prodigal."
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"Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore."
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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."
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"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."
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"I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies."
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"Life is like a butterfly. You can chase, or you can let it come to you."
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"There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself.... Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth."
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"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."
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"Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly."
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"With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow."
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"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."
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"I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that."
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"The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime."
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