Butterfly Quotes

1. “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

2. “I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”

3. “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”

4. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

5. “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

6. “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.”

7. “This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.”

8. “Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.”

9. “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.”

10. “Metamorphosis has always been the greatest symbol of change for poets and artists. Imagine that you could be a caterpillar one moment and a butterfly the next.”

11. “Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and - as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis - emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness.”

12. “As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people.”

13. “Life seeks life and loves life. The opening of a catkin of a willow, in the flight of the butterfly, in the chirping of a tree-toad or the sweep of an eagle - my life loves to see how others live, exults in their joy, and so far is partner in their great concern.”

14. “I mean, everything that is upon this earth, even from a worm or a caterpillar that blossoms into a butterfly, you know, these things are just amazing.”

15. “I'm a social butterfly. But as I've gotten older, I've realized that I do have that side of me where I become a wallflower.”

16. “Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life. It's akin to using a bulldozer to catch a butterfly, destroying a whole ecosystem for the sake of a few pounds of protein. We wouldn't do this on land, so why do it in the oceans?”

17. “Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.”

18. “My dad is a Chatty Cathy, the social butterfly; friendly; knows everybody in the whole world by six degrees; tells me that every performance is the greatest he's ever seen, every new outfit is the coolest. Constant cheerleader.”

19. “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.”

20. “The cynic finds love with the idealist. The rebel with the conformist. The social butterfly with the bookworm. They help each other balance their lives.”

21. “David knew everyone because he's such a social butterfly.”

22. “When I ran, I felt like a butterfly that was free.”

23. “Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.”

24. “Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn't look anything like a butterfly.”

25. “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.”

26. “I should like to present myself to the young painters of the year 2000 with the wings of a butterfly.”

27. “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!”

28. “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.”

29. “I would say things like 'I am the greatest! I'm pretty! If you talk jive, you'll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I'm pretty!' When white people heard me talking like this, some said, 'That black man talks too much. He's bragging.'”

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

31. “When I first played some Coltrane-type stuff on the 'Pimp a Butterfly' sessions, Kendrick got it immediately. 'I want it to sound like it's on fire,' he'd say. That's the kind of common ground that the best jazz and the best hip-hop have.”

32. “I like to read books and be alone; I'm not social butterfly person.”

33. “I used to watch old clips of Muhammad Ali, where he'd be talking the jive during interviews, you know, 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, man, rumble.'”

34. “Other people might want a Ferrari, but I wanted a butterfly house. I built it together with a blacksmith. We designed it together.”

35. “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.”

36. “I love the garishness of the '90s - the giant platform shoes, the sparkly butterfly tops, the chokers.”

37. “My favorite movie is 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.'”

38. “Social entrepreneurship is like a butterfly, sucking honey from a flower, but the flower won't die. They're helping the flower to make pollination.”

39. “I like to read books and be alone; I'm not social butterfly person. I'm sorry.”

40. “I've never really been a social butterfly, so to speak.”

41. “I've tried to incorporate new ways of playing the game. That's why you hear people call me a 'hybrid goalie' and say I adjust to the situation, never doing the same thing over and over like a butterfly goalie. I try to see what works and hopefully with my talent I'm able to play it and make it happen.”

42. “Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves.”

43. “I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar.”

44. “We did that with people like Chris Rock, Woody Harrelson, and the environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill.”

45. “Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?”

46. “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.”

47. “Butterfly was certainly a vehicle for me, and if it died, it still would have served its purpose, in spades. We never expected it to give me the visibility it has given me. It was just a small thing as a vehicle, and suddenly the whole world knew about it.”

48. “What's a butterfly garden without butterflies?”

49. “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.”

50. “I wasn't a social butterfly at all.”

51. “I'm Serena Williams on the court, but away I have so many different names. I call myself Butterfly.”

52. “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.”

53. “If in 1989 I said, 'I have an idea: Bottle water and sell it. And charge more than a beer,' they would have chased me around with a giant butterfly net. The same with paying to watch a television station.”

54. “A cockroach likely has no less brainpower than a butterfly, but we're quicker to deny it consciousness because it's a species we dislike.”

55. “Even the pictures I was doing at college - a little narrative based on a butterfly catcher, or a chimney sweep - the images were always telling stories. They were all scenarios and moods which I storyboarded and worked through - it's exactly what I do now.”

56. “Making something and sending it out into the world and then people not only responding to it but adopting it for their own and making a separate thing for it, that's beautiful. It just shows you how much you can affect other people… the butterfly effect of everything you put out into the world.”

57. “I don't do the media because of 'Woo-woo, Julia Butterfly,' as I call it. I'm not into promoting me. I'm into talking about why I've done what I've done, why I continue to do this work and why other people should care.”

58. “The film 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,' based the book of the same name, has a line that enlightens and comforts me. The protagonist, who has lost all ability to move except one eye, discusses his role as a father. He notes, 'Even a fraction of a father is still a father.'”

59. “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.”

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

61. “Having done 'M. Butterfly,' I'm conscious of the choices women make with their clothes and makeup on screen.”

62. “In my iPod, there are many operas, from A to Z. I have 'Aida' and 'Boheme' and 'Butterfly' and 'Cavalleria'. My passion is for opera, but when I'm in the car, I listen to everything.”

63. “My education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund, so a charity school, run like an orphanage, with uniforms and beatings. It was tough, but it got me to Cambridge - like being a chrysalis suddenly becoming a butterfly.”

64. “I'm still like a butterfly going from one job to another job. But it's quite lovely - I hope to keep this freedom, to have fun.”

65. “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.”

66. “I did great things in the theater. I did some nice roles, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' or 'La Vie en Rose.' And I love my role in 'Frantic.'”

67. “The term 'breakout' always makes me think of an inmate or some butterfly emerging out of a cocoon.”

68. “I don't really go out partying, but I'm definitely a social butterfly.”

69. “Music is quicksilver, gossamer; careers are measured in butterfly lifetimes.”

70. “'Butterfly Mosque' came out of the emails I wrote to family and friends back home after moving to Egypt.”

71. “I was kind of a loser at ballet school. It's all rich kids, and I was not a wealthy kid. I didn't have the Chanel butterfly clip everyone else did.”

72. “I race six events. I specialise in butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle, and it's not impossible, but it is hard to be able to race every single race, and day after day as well.”

73. “Going into auditions, there is a wonderful butterfly feeling in your stomach - an equal balance of being utterly terrified and exhilarated that this is your chance.”

74. “When I go onstage, every situation I have to play, I feel pain. When I sing 'Madama Butterfly' I feel completely everything she felt: It's horrible.”

75. “The point is that I am such a big fan of Puccini and that Butterfly is the most difficult and complete role that you can imagine. Just to sing it with a good voice is not enough: it asks tears from your soul. I am very emotional on stage, and the music is so tender that I suffer for real when I am singing it. So I cannot do many performances.”

76. “'M. Butterfly' is usually the answer to the question, 'What has been your favorite experience?' The reason being, it is an astonishing play.”

77. “Books like Munro's are so deeply personal and idiosyncratic that it feels like a violation to subject them to the crude business of committee meetings and PR releases; you might as well storm a butterfly den with a klieg light.”

78. “I feel like the worst has happened to me, so what better person to skate to 'Madame Butterfly' than me?”

79. “I remember, with Kendrick on 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' I was in tears. I literally was because it had pulled me and pushed me and stretched me and crushed me and expanded me. It was like I didn't know which way was up. By the end of it, I felt like I was floating in the ocean like a carcass.”

80. “Getting into drag almost seemed like, not my destiny, but you know how a caterpillar is gonna become a butterfly no matter what? It felt very like that.”

81. “When I was working on 'To Pimp A Butterfly' and 'DAMN.,' I'm really making music for Kendrick. It's a different mindset than when I'm making music for me. I'm trying to get into his head and figure out what he wants because it's his vision. That's what I expect from people when they're playing on my records.”

82. “Mahavishnu's drummer Billy Cobham was the best I'd ever heard. Not loud, that's not the secret - powerful as hell when he wanted to be - but 90 per cent of the time, he was just dancing with the drums, you know? Just like a butterfly, all over them.”

83. “I was always super outgoing, loud, the social butterfly of my high school and elementary school.”

84. “Swimming is definitely a big passion that I have, but I was a champion for the butterfly and the free style and stuff. It was a hard decision if I wanted to move to the U.S. to get into music, but I was grateful that I had two choices and many things to do.”

85. “Nando's is my pre-match meal. I have the butterfly chicken, mash and coleslaw.”

86. “I was like the party kid. I was a social butterfly.”

87. “I didn't want to learn the butterfly because it's hard. I got it right away, but I didn't want to do it.”

88. “I'm not like a social butterfly or anything, but I just miss seeing even my friends.”

89. “I'm not a social butterfly.”

90. “My parents have been incredibly supportive of me. They've always stood by me, whatever my decisions. When I was younger, I was like a butterfly flitting from one thing to the next - be it gymnastics, karate or piano lessons. They never forced me into anything.”