50 Inspirational Caterpillar to Butterfly Quotes That Celebrate Transformation

"When a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it takes all of its experiences and everything that lives inside itself and transforms into a beautiful creature. What people don’t always notice is the metamorphosis - the isolation, the discomfort, even the pain."

- Terryca Taylor

"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

"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

"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

"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

"Then, step by step, you start to understand the difference that it produces inside yourself. And in the end, you choose who you want to be from that moment on. And when you reach that state of mind and being, you cannot undo what you just did. And you change. You transform yourself from a caterpillar into a beautiful colorful butterfly. You start to love your new colors, your wings, and once that process begins, you may develop this desire to fly up, and from up there, you see yourself first, then your life, your family, your friends, your job, everything. You start to compare your previous caterpillar perception, with the new butterfly one. If you like the caterpillar view, you stick to it. If not, you will change it completely. But this is not an easy overnight process. It takes time, patience, and perseverance to live like a butterfly."

- Diana-Maria Georgescu

"You do not just wake up and become the butterfly. Growth is a process."

- Rupi Kaur

"If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies."

- Wendy Mass

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."

- Maya Angelou

"The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on."

- Guillermo del Toro

"Open your heart and mind like the wings of a butterfly. See then how high you can fly."

- Zeenat Aman

"Failure is like a caterpillar before it becomes a butterfly."

- Peta Kelly

"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."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people."

- Joseph B. Wirthlin

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly."

- Buckminster R. Fuller

"Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time."

- Deborah Chaskin

"A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone."

- Mandy Hale

"We can learn a lesson from the butterfly beginning its life crawling along the ground, then spinning a cocoon, patiently waiting until the day it will fly."

- Heather Wolf

"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

"Everyone is like a butterfly. They start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful, graceful butterflies that everyone loves."

- Drew Barrymore

"Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies, it creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation."

- Stephanie Marshall

"A butterfly symbolizes acceptance of each new phase in life. To keep faith as everything around you changed."

- Lisa Kleypas

"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

"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 go to grow their wings."

- Necole Stephens

"Just when the caterpillar thought “I am incapable of moving,” it became a butterfly."

- Annette Thomas

"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

"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

"The wings of transformation are born of patience and struggle."

- Janet Dickens

"A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly."

- André Gide

"Fighting has taught me that the caterpillar takes a while to turn into a majestic butterfly."

- Jesse Taylor

"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."

- Helen Keller

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar story is about hope. You, like the little caterpillar, will grow up, unfold your wings, and fly off into the future."

- Eric Carle

"Life without pain is a life spent in a cocoon. You gotta break the cocoon to experience your beauty."

- Shubhi

"Meditation is the process of transformation and beautification of soul from a leaf-eating caterpillar to a nectar-sipping butterfly. It grows with the wings of love and compassion."

- Amit Ray

"Self Love is about becoming a butterfly from a caterpillar. It is about personal development, it is about an evolution."

- Jasz Gill

"Only those who stick around long enough to see the caterpillar turn into the butterfly actually get to witness the transformation."

- Kristin Michelle Elizabeth

"Caterpillar dun' become butterfly-caterpillar die so butterfly can be. A new thing. We all must let ourselves die to be what we will be. But we cling to what we know."

- Ryan Winfield

"Learn to appreciate the caterpillar and the whole process of metamorphosis! The beauty and lightness of the butterfly only exist after going through these phases."

- Karina Fonseca Azevedo

"You're a little caterpillar inside your cocoon. Break out and fly!"

- Jonathan Nettles

"Caterpillar becomes a pupa, meditates and becomes a colorful butterfly!"

- Ankala Subbarao

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"Be like a butterfly and a flower—beautiful and sought after, yet unassuming and gentle."

- Jarod Kintz

"'Just living isn’t enough,' said the butterfly, 'one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.'"

- Hans Christian Anderson

"Butterflies are not called butterflies overnight. They have to undergo tons of changes in order to acquire that name."

- Michael Bassey Johnson

"Butterflies are nature’s angels. They remind us what a gift it is to be alive."

- Robyn Nola

"Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing."

- Dolly Parton

"When the spirit of nature touches us, our hearts turn into a butterfly!"

- Mehmet Murat Ildan

"Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar."

- Cornelia Funke

"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."

- Anna Pavlova

"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."

- Carl Sagan

"Love is like a butterfly, beautiful and delicate… If you truly care for it, you’ll do whatever you can to make it happy, even if that means letting it go."

- Scott Pemberton

"Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same."

- Kendrick Lamar

"We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis."

- LeeAnn Taylor

"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."

- Sharifah Norhamidah

"Someday, I will be a beautiful butterfly, and then everything will be better."

- Heimlich

"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 Riviera

"I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free."

- Charles Dickens

"Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average lifespan is a mere five to fourteen days."

- Ellen DeGeneres

"Nature's message was always there and for us to see. It was written on the wings of butterflies."

- Kjell B. Sandved

"If you smile when you see a butterfly, you have happiness in your soul."

- Diana Cooper

"Now he wasn’t hungry any more- and he wasn’t a little caterpillar any more."

- Eric Carle

"Take time to be a butterfly."

- Gillian Duce

"And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful."

- Ruskin Bond

"Beautiful and graceful, butterflies lift our spirits with their loveliness and lyric flight."

- Gloria B. Schlaepfer

"Butterflies are God’s confetti, thrown upon the Earth in celebration of His love."

- K. D’Angelo

"The most beautiful of butterflies is nothing but a well-dressed caterpillar."

- Corina Abdulahm Negura

"To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven is as if the groveling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals."

- Anne Bronte

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

- Muhammad Ali

"Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man."

- Vladimir Nabokov

"In nature, a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with humans it is the other way around: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar."

- Anton Chekhov

"Butterflies are self-propelled flowers."

- Robert A. Heinlein

"If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down."

- Buddha

"You’ve gotta be a caterpillar before you are a butterfly. Problem is, most people aren't willing to be a caterpillar."

"It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world."

"A butterfly always reminds that there is always beauty at the end of all the pain."

"How will you know you can fly if you never spread your wings?"

"The butterfly can only become beautiful if the caterpillar stays brave."

"You’ve gotta be a caterpillar before you are a butterfly. Problem is, most people aren’t willing to be a caterpillar."

"Don’t conform to the world. Be like the butterfly and transform."

"Just when the caterpillar thought her life was over, she began to fly."

"A butterfly always reminds us that there is always beauty at the end of all the pain."

"Break free of your cocoon and give yourself the freedom to fly."