Butterflies are amazing creatures, whose colors and beauty are simply incredible. Because of the fascinating metamorphosis they go through, they often symbolize change, transformation, and rebirth — both physical and spiritual.
Here is a collection of 40 inspiring quotes about butterflies — enjoy!
Forgetting is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was, and there was only ever a butterfly.
— Robert Jackson Bennett
If you smile when you see a butterfly, you have happiness in your soul.
— Diana Cooper
What if that change you are avoiding is the one that gives you wings?
— Unknown
Butterflies are nature’s angels. They remind us what a gift it is to be alive.
— Robyn Nola
Butterflies live most of their lives being completely ordinary. And then, one day, the unexpected happens. They burst from their cocoons in a blaze of colors and become utterly extraordinary. It’s the shortest phase of their lives, but it holds the greatest importance. It shows us how empowering change can be.
— Kelseyleigh Reber
Failure is like a caterpillar before it becomes a butterfly.
— Peta Kelly
If there is one creature that represents my essence, it’s butterflies.
— Patricia Velasquez
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
— Richard Bach
Happiness is a butterfly. When pursued, it’s always just beyond your grasp; but if you sit down quietly, it may alight upon you.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Growth and transformation occur not by changing who we are, but as we summon the courage to be who we are.
— Katrina Kenison
Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life.
— Jeffrey Glassberg
A butterfly symbolizes acceptance of each new phase in life.
— Lisa Kleypas
The wings of transformation are born of patience and struggle.
— Janet Dickens
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 I am a man?
— Zhuang Zhou
Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts.
— Catherynne Valente
A butterfly is a caterpillar who never gave up on his dream to fly.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness and still become something beautiful.
— Unknown
A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.
— Mandy Hale
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
— R. Buckminster Fuller
And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.
— Ruskin Bond
When you find yourself cocooned in isolation and you cannot find your way out of darkness — remember, this is similar to the place where caterpillars grow their wings.
— Unknown
I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
— William Stafford
If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.
— Wendy Mass
The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.
— Guillermo del Toro
Everyone is like a butterfly: they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful, graceful butterflies that everyone loves.
— Drew Barrymore
The great loneliness, like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we, too, must go through such a time, when life as we have known it is over. All we know is something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly; soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.
— Elizabeth Lesser
In the midst of change we often discover wings we never knew we had.
— Ekaterina Walter
It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.
— Voltaire
You don’t just wake up and become a butterfly. Growth is a process.
— Rupi Kaur
Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.
— Naya Rivera
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
— Maya Angelou
The only way you survive is, you continuously transform into something else.
— Ginni Rometty
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.
— Henry David Thoreau
How does one become a butterfly? You have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
— Trina Paulus
Life is about change. Sometimes it’s painful; sometimes it’s beautiful. But most of the time it’s both.
— Kristin Kreuk
A butterfly is a reminder to us that even the ugliest things can be beautiful if given its own personal time and space.
— Unknown
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.
— Louie Schwartzberg
No action is more fascinating than the action of self-transformation. Nothing on earth can compare with its drama or value.
— Vernon Howard
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
— Rabindranath Tagore
I always loved butterflies because they remind us that it’s never too late to transform ourselves.
— Drew Barrymore
