A collection of powerful butterfly quotes to inspire change and metamorphosis in you!
Butterflies have always been a great reminder that regardless of what you are going through right now, even if you feel stuck and everything in your life seems to be so bleak, you are still capable of transformation. You still have the power to change your life, reinvent yourself and soar high!
HERE ARE 80+ INSPIRING BUTTERFLY QUOTES FOR YOU TO ENJOY
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
— Maya Angelou
Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupér
I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
— John Keats
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
— Muhammad Ali
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.
— Richard Bach
Butterflies are self propelled flowers.
— Robert A. Heinlein
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
— Charles Dickens
The butterfly said to the sun, “They can’t stop talking about my transformation. I can only do it once in my lifetime. If only they knew, they can do it at any time and in countless ways.
— Dodinsky
When I was a girl I would look out my bedroom window at the caterpillars; I envied them so much. No matter what they were before, no matter what happened to them, they could just hide away and turn into these beautiful creatures that could fly away completely untouched.
— Patch Adams
When I ran, I felt like a butterfly that was free.
— Wilma Rudolph
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
Like a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis, waiting for the perfect moment, I was waiting for the day I could burst forth and fly away and find my home.
— Emme Rollins
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
— Rabindranath Tagore
As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people.
— Joseph B. Wirthlin
And when I was angry, when I was younger, I was in a cocoon. Now I’m a beautiful, black butterfly.
— Tracy Morgan
In the silence of the woods
among the wildflowers
butterflies danced.
— Meeta Ahluwalia
Observe the behavior of the butterfly, and chase no one, for they will only elude you.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
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
Butterflies are the most beautiful creatures ever. They should call them beautiflies, don’t you think?
— Richelle E. Goodrich
Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves.
— Drew Barrymore
A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.
— Mandy Hale
Butterflies are but petals upon the sky.
— Jazz Feylynn
Butterflies are beautiful, but the process of emerging from the chrysalis and spreading your wings can hurt like fucking hell. But still, you will survive the transformation (over and over again) and you will fly. Remember this when it hurts the most. This is the metamorphosis, the going down to liquid, and the rising again. It’s no joke – but damn, it’s one hell of a journey.
— Jeanette LeBlanc
The struggle to leave the cocoon is what strengthens the butterfly’s wings so she can fly. I am about to become something beautiful.
— Tricia Stirling
Sometimes to change a situation you are in requires you to take a giant leap. But, you won’t be able to fly unless you are willing to transform.
— Suzy Kassem
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
I hope she still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn’t think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn’t be there.
— Susan Meissner
When a caterpillar bursts from its cocoon and discovers it has wings, it does not sit idly, hoping to one day turn back. It flies.
— Kelseyleigh Reber
The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn’t get to decide which you were, and pin you down a like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.
— Jojo Moyes
INSPIRATIONAL BUTTERFLY QUOTES
Butterflies are not called butterflies overnight.
They have to undergo tons of changes in order to acquire that name.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
I’ve always loved butterflies, because they remind us that it’s never too late to transform ourselves.
— Drew Barrymore
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.
— Aquaria
And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.
— Ruskin Bond
Catching butterflies won’t give you a taste of freedom but the knowledge that weights are not carried in wings.
— Goitsemang Mvula
Be like a butterfly and a flower—beautiful and sought after, yet unassuming and gentle.
— Jarod Kintz
If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.
— Wendy Mass
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.
— Gillian Flynn
I watch her with loving sadness as she dulls her shine to please others. Will this butterfly ever soar? Will she continue to pretend she can’t fly? Her greatest life awaits this decision.
— Steve Maraboli
RELATED INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE POSTS:
To catch the butterflies and the rainbows of your dream, walk alone, keep faith in yourself, focus your energy and start the adventure.
— Amit Ray
Just living is not enough,’ said the butterfly, ‘one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.’
— Hans Christian Anderson
Butterflies are a breath of beauty fluttering by, they are mystery chronicled upon wing, they bring forth the grace and wonder of this world to our eyes everyday
— K. D’Angelo
Take time to be a butterfly.
— Gillian Duce
How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively. Orange Butterfly “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
— Trina Paulus
We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Sometimes just a little bit of light is enough to turn phobias into fluttering butterflies.
— Marina Matiss
You put butterflies back into my soul and painted their wings with passion and poetry.
— Melody Lee
Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies, it creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation.
— Stephanie Marshall
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
— Richard Buckminster Fuller
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.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Butterflies are God’s confetti, thrown upon the Earth in celebration of His love
— K. D’Angelo
To catch the butterflies of your dreams you have to come out of your comfort zone, out of your fear zone.
— Amit Ray
Failure is like a caterpillar before it becomes a butterfly.
— Peta Kelly
When I see a dancing butterfly,
When I see a half blooming flower,
Their eager wish to make this world happy,
My mind dances with joy,
My soul emerges in happiness.
— Debasish Mridha
I’d be a butterfly; living a rover, Dying when fair things are fading away.
— Thomas Haynes Bayly
Keep up your faith to go high and fly, even after so many pains and sorrow. You can turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Life gives you a second change: a call to grow.
— Ana Claudia Antunes
Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time
— Deborah Chaskin
I’d be a butterfly, born in a bower, Where roses and lilies and violets meet.
— Thomas Haynes Bayly
And just when the darkness
became too much to bear
and the struggle too hard,
the light broke through
and the caterpillar emerged
a butterfly
delicate but unbroken,
wild and gentle,
finally free to spread its lovely wings
and fly away on the wind.
— L.R. Knost
MORE INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES ABOUT BUTTERFLIES
You do not just wake up and become the butterfly. Growth is a process.
— Rupi Kaur
For when ideas flutter in haze, we collaborate without notice and collect them as butterflies only to set them free into the world.
— Shawn Lukas
We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies, the song of the birds, if we can’t see the stars at night.
— Thomas Berry
Transformation
Sometimes life will is a struggle and you feel as if you are suffocating you start to transform and soon you will emerge to fly higher than you have ever been!
— Positively Sherry
The uglier the caterpillar the lovelier the butterfly.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
like a butterfly,
her wings unfolded
— butterflies rising
I welcome all butterflies into my heart because that feeling is a constant reminder of how alive and full of love I truly am.
— Karen A. Baquiran
Similar to a butterfly, I’ve gone through a metamorphosis, been released from my dark cocoon, embraced my wings, and soared!
— Dana Arcuri
Nor did we know if the tight, dark days of hanging upside down was the onset of death or a necessary part of an incredible transformation.
— Ava Homa
Representation is vital, otherwise the butterfly surrounded by a group of moths unable to see itself will keep trying to become the moth – representation.
— Rupi Kaur
Among the varied species of insects, butterflies are the most poetic.
— Ana Gerhard
Butterflies are like angels kisses sent from heaven.
— Malia Kirk
I am free to be me!
The caterpillar loved her time surrounded by the comfort of her cocoon …then one day she had a thought maybe it was time for a new adventure!!
— Positively Sherry
For our people, butterflies are a symbol of hope. It’s said that if you capture one in your hands and whisper your dreams to it, it will carry them up to the heavens so that the wish can be granted.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon
When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.
— Dean Jackson
…a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.
— Marlene Van Niekerk
Just when the caterpillar thought “I am incapable of moving,” it became a butterfly.
— Annette Thomas
And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Let us find inner freedom in each lucky moment that we encounter, like a sun-basking butterfly that finds peace on a cherry blossom petal.
— Erik Pevernagie
We can learn a lesson from the butterfly beginning it’s life crawling along the ground, then spinning a cocoon, patiently waiting until the day it will fly.
— Heather Wolf
Don’t be afraid. Change is such a beautiful thing”, said the Butterfly.
— Sabrina Newby
The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.
— Guillermo del Toro
The butterfly is a flying flower, the flower a tethered butterfly.
— Ponce Denis Ecouchard Lebrun
When the spirit of nature touches us, our hearts turn into a butterfly!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Don’t be so stuck in a situation or feeling that when the tide turns you can’t see the transformation or manifestation. The caterpillar eventually turns into a butterfly. You will need to determine which perspective you will see.
— Laticia Dezell
Butterflies are nature’s tragic heroes. They 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 is the shortest phase of their lives, but it holds the greatest importance. It shows us how empowering change can be.
— Kelseyleigh Reber
Hold on to your heart and life will give you wings.
— A.D. Posey
Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.
It’s only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.
— Ram Dass
God begins to paint the clouds in the eastern sky when the mountains butterflies come flying home
— Srinidhi.R
Only those who stick around long enough to see the caterpillar turn into the butterfly actually get to witness the transformation.
— Kristin Michelle Elizabeth
Love is like a butterfly—chase it and it will fly away. Be still and be you and it will come and rest upon your skin where it feels safe and welcome.
— Toni Sorenson