Butterfly Quotes - Page 9

• Except to heaven, she is nought; Except for angels, lone; Except to some wide-wandering bee, A flower superfluous blown; Except for winds, provincial; Except by butterflies, Unnoticed as a single dew That on the acre lies

  Howard Mumford Jones

  Lying, Flower, Angel

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• Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

  Alan Lightman

  Live Life, Sadness, Contentment

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.47, Vintage

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• ...the problem of space remained, she thought, taking up her brush again. It glared at her. The whole mass of the picture was poised upon that weight. Beautiful and bright it should be on the surface, feathery and evanescent, one colour melting into another like the colours on a butterfly's wing; but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with bolts of iron.

  Virginia Woolf

  Beautiful, Wings, Iron

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.367, Wordsworth Editions

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• In this sense love is of a different order to any other phenomenon, for it may be both an event and a sign of that invisible mechanism I spoke of before; perhaps the finest sign, the most certain. In it’s throes we need neither luck nor science. We are the wheel, and the man who profits by it. We are the star, and the darkness it pierces. We are the butterfly, brief and beautiful.

  Clive Barker

  Beautiful, Stars, Love Is

  "Galilee". Book by Clive Barker, February 3, 1999.

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• I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Believe, Swimming, Soul

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• My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Men, Hunting

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• (Ravic speaking of a butterfly caught in the Louvre) In the morning it would search for flowers and life and the light honey of blossoms and would not find them and later it would fall asleep on millennial marble, weakened by then, until the grip of the delicate, tenacious feet loosened and it fell, a thin leaf of premature autumn.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Morning, Flower, Fall

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• For the butterfly, mating and propagation involve the sacrifice of life, for the human being, the sacrifice of beauty.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Sex, Sacrifice, Mating

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• When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not (i)emerge(i), do not (i)leave(i): they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies.

  Roland Barthes

  Moving, Mean, Doe

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• At first we raced through space, like shadows and light; her rants, my raves; her dark hair, my blonde; black dresses, white. She's a purple-black African-violet-dark butterfly and I a white moth. We were two wild ponies, Dawn and Midnight, the wind electrifying our manes and our hooves quaking the city; we were photo negatives of each other, together making the perfect image of a girl.

  Francesca Lia Block

  Girl, Dark, Light

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• What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation, God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears.

  Brennan Manning

  Selfish, Eagles, Eggs

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• The morning woods were utterly new. A strong yellow light pooled beneath the trees; my shadow appeared and vanished on the path, since a third of the trees I walked under were still bare, a third spread a luminous haze wherever they grew, and another third blocked the sun with new, whole leaves. The snakes were out - I saw a bright, smashed one on the path - and the butterflies were vaulting and furling about; the phlox was at its peak, and even the evergreens looked greener, newly created and washed.

  Annie Dillard

  Strong, Morning, Snakes

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• Butterflies may be better indicators of the health of our environment than birds.

  Roger Tory Peterson

  Health, Science, Bird

  George H. Harrison, Roger Tory Peterson (1976). “Roger Tory Peterson's Dozen Birding Hot Spots”, Simon & Schuster

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• It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.

  Neil Gaiman

  Views, Europe, Earthquakes

  "Good Omens". Book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, 1990.

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• Life is chaotic and unpredictable. If a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies

  Stephen Colbert

  Discovery, Opposites, Wings

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• Oh, God. I'm in big trouble. Because I'm staring. I can't keep my eyes from ogling his chiseled triceps and biceps and every other "eps ' he has. The butterflies in my stomach have just multiplied tenfold as my wandering gaze meets his.

  Simone Elkeles

  Eye, Biceps, Trouble

  Simone Elkeles (2011). “Perfect Chemistry”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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• Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf!

  Laini Taylor

  Stomach, Gross

  Laini Taylor (2011). “Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.49, Hachette UK

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• There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality.

  Ellen Bass

  Integrity, Growth, Tadpoles

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• In the next few galactic seconds, the fate of the universe will be decided. Life - the ultimate experiment - will either explode into space, and engulf the star-clouds in a fire storm of children, trees, and butterfly wings; or Life will fail, fizzle, and gutter out, leaving the universe shrouded forever in impenetrable blankness, devoid of hope.

  Marshall Savage

  Stars, Children, Philosophical

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• Thou cannot harm a butterfly, without troubling a star.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Stars, Harm

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• The Caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly

  Timothy Leary

  Drug, Caterpillars

  Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, George A. Koopman (1988). “Neuropolitique”, New Falcon Publications

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• Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive. As soon as he touched her, he wondered how he’d gone this long without doing it. He rubbed his thumb through her palm and up her fingers, and was aware of her every breath.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Hands, Long, Gone

  Rainbow Rowell (2013). “Eleanor & Park”, p.71, Macmillan

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• To Beatrice- My love flew like a butterfly Until death swooped down like a bat As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said: 'That's the end of that.

  Daniel Handler

  Bats, Montana, Poet

  "A Series of Unfortunate Events #4: The Miserable Mill". Book by Daniel Handler, www.theguardian.com. April 5, 2000.

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• The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Stars, Eye, Exclamation Marks

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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.

  Pema Chodron

  Knowing, Laughing, Ego

  Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.12, Shambhala Publications

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