These butterfly quotes and Instagram captions capture the essence of one of the most beautiful insects on earth.
With their beautiful wings, fluttering flight, and graceful ways, butterflies paint a picture of an enjoyable summer day.
Enjoy these inspirational butterfly quotes and share them with those you love.
Best Butterfly Quotes
Our panel selected the following quotations as the best of the bunch.
1.) The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
George Carlin
2.) There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
Richard Buckminster Fuller
3.) To know God, watch a butterfly return to the same tree – after a year and a thousand miles.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie
4.) Butterflies are nature’s angels. They remind us what a gift it is to be alive.
Robyn Nola
5.) Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.
Philip Pullman
6.) Love is like a butterfly: It goes where it pleases, and it pleases wherever it goes.
Unknown
7.) The butterfly is a flying flower. The flower is a tethered butterfly.
Ponce Denis
Good Butterfly Quotes
They say, “Only in dreams men are truly free; what does a butterfly dream about? – It’s already free!”
Unknown
Children are caterpillars, and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.
Cornelia Funke
Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.
Alma Gluck
The story is like a butterfly whose wings transport us to another world where we receive gifts that change who we are and who we want to be.
Harley King
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.
Annie Besant
Everyone is like a butterfly; they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful, graceful butterflies that everyone loves.
Drew Barrymore
Go on, hitch a ride on the back of a butterfly. There’s no better way to fly.
Patrick Monahan
Don’t be afraid. Change is such a beautiful thing”, said the butterfly.
Sabrina Newby
Butterfly Quotes For Kids
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
As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
A butterfly symbolizes acceptance of each new phase in life. To keep faith as everything around you changed.
Lisa Kleypas
When he laughed in his throat, the butterfly laughed at me too. Its obscene fluttering corrupted me into darkness.
Kazuya Minekura
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
I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just a little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar.
Robert Wyatt
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
Soar up high with the beauty and grace of a butterfly.
Unknown
Butterfly Quotes About Life
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.
Joseph Conrad
Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.
Andre Gide
Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.
Haruki Murakami
Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days.
Ellen DeGeneres
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.
Ernest Hemingway
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
When the spirit of nature touches us, our hearts turn into a butterfly!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
Short Sayings about Butterflies
Fighting has taught me that the caterpillar takes a while to turn into a majestic butterfly.
Jesse Taylor
A butterfly is like the soul of a person; it dries out in captivity.
Marlene Van Niekerk
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
Charles Dickens
You can only chase a butterfly for so long.
Jane Yolen
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
Carl Sagan
I sting like a butterfly and punch like a flea.
Si Robertson
But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.
Jacqueline Woodson
And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.
Ruskin Bond
I am still alone, broken and small, the butterfly fighting for life in the grass.
Marie Lu
If there is one creature that represents my essence, it’s butterflies.
Patricia Velasquez
She is like a butterfly; beautiful to look at but hard to catch.
Nikki Rowe
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
Helen Keller
We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.
LeeAnn Taylor
If you want to fly, you have to flap your own wings!
Claire Williams
I’d be a butterfly, living a rover, Dying when fair things are fading away.
Thomas Haynes Bayly
How to Write a Poem; catch the air around the butterfly.
Katerina Stoykova Klemer
Butterflies are self-propelled flowers.
R.H. Heinlein
Inspirational Butterfly Quotes
A butterfly says, “The caterpillar-me is history, my metamorphosis, a mystery, and today is a present. My struggle gifted me.”
Manali Oak
“Just living isn’t enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”
Hans Christian Anderson
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 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 that 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
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
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 is the shortest phase of their lives, but it holds the greatest importance. It shows us how empowering change can be.
Kelseyleigh Reber
Inspiring Butterflies
You’ve got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.
Mike Markkula
Just like a butterfly, I, too, will awaken in my own time.
Unknown
Then you find yourself cocooned in isolation, and you cannot find your way out of the darkness. Remember, this is similar to the place where caterpillars go to grow their wings.
Necole Stephens
Everyone is like a butterfly; they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful, graceful butterflies that everyone loves.
Drew Barrymore
When I ran, I felt like a butterfly that was free.
Wilma Rudolph
Open your heart and mind like the wings of a butterfly. See then how high you can fly.
Zeenat Aman
A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.
Andre Gide
The butterfly flits from bloom to bloom, as not to miss one fragrant plume. In her sight exists no garden finale, only paradise of flowered hill and valley.
K. D’Angelo
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
Motivational
Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.
Kendrick Lamar
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
For a new year to bring you something new, make a move, like a butterfly tearing its cocoon! Make a move!
Mehmet Murat İldan
If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.
Wendy Mass
A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.
Mandy Hale
You do not just wake up and become the butterfly. Growth is a process.
Rupi Kaur
With the rose, the butterfly’s deep in love, A thousand times hovering round; But round himself, all tender like gold, The sun’s sweet ray is hovering found.
Heinrich Heine
Sad Butterfly Quotes
To all the broken-hearted and anyone feeling sad, may your hearts heal, and may you feel happy in your lives. Flutter as the butterflies do.
Krystal
And when I was angry, when I was younger, I was in a cocoon. Now I’m a beautiful black butterfly.
Tracy Morgan
Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine.
Jeffrey Glassberg
Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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 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 know they can do it at any time and in countless ways.”
Dodinsky
“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
Butterfly Sayings
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.
Chuang Tzu
The butterflies: What an educated sense of beauty they have. They seem only an ornament to society, and yet, if they were gone, how substantial would be their loss.
Phil Robinson
Nature’s message was always there and for us to see. It was written on the wings of butterflies.
Kjell B. Sandved
Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.
Elizabeth Goudge
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 a partner in their great concern.
Edward Everett Hale
Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.
Rabindranath Tagore
A caterpillar, after its deep slumber, wakes up to reality to realize that truth is not always bitter after all!
Manali Oak
Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies; it creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation.
Stephanie Marshall
You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly in the grass, it will come and sit on your shoulder.
Unknown
Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn’t look anything like a butterfly.
Lynn Margulis
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.
Unknown
Butterfly Quotes About Love
It’s interesting how frequently the topic of love comes up in butterfly quotes. Why do you think that is the case?
Love is like a butterfly. It goes where it pleases, and it pleases wherever it goes. Love is like a butterfly; hold it too tight, and it’ll crush. Hold it too loose; it’ll fly.
Unknown
I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
John Keats
Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were—butterflies, for instance, and women who’ve been in love with the wrong man too often.
Alice Hoffman
You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway, and you’ll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever; and they die almost at once.
Philip Pullman
The thing about butterflies, Mr. Crow, is that they need to be admired from afar.
A. Zavarelli
A flower knows when its butterfly will return, and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand; but now it hurts to watch you leave so soon when I don’t know if you will ever come back.
Sanober Khan
Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.
Dolly Parton
When I was just a cute little caterpillar, you loved me. So I became a butterfly so you would never leave.
Crystal Woods
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
Quotes About Beauty
These butterfly quotes address the beautiful nature of this insect.
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
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
Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness and still become something beautiful.
Unknown
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
Watching them flying in the warm sun among the daisies in their garden, her mother had said to her, see, they have a beautiful life.
Lisa Genova
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 two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Butterflies are beautiful, but the process of emerging from the chrysalis and spreading your wings can hurt. But still, you will survive the transformation (over and over again), and you will fly. Remember this when it hurts the most.
Jeanette LeBlanc
Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine.
Jeffrey Glassberg
May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun. And find your shoulder to light on, to bring you luck, happiness, and riches. Today, tomorrow, and beyond.
Irish Blessing
Nature’s Beauty
Butterflies are God’s confetti, thrown upon the Earth in celebration of His love.
K. D’Angelo
The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on. Guillermo del Toro
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
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.
Unknown
Someday, I will be a beautiful butterfly, and then everything will be better.
Heimlich, A Bug’s Life
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
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
Butterflies, they are like dream flowers, childhood dreams which have broken loose from their stalks and escaped into the sunshine.
Unknown
Awaken to the universe’s simple gift of the butterfly. Watch with fascination and joy as a jeweled treasure glides by and gently touches your soul.
K. D’Angelo
Ten Most Beautiful Butterflies Video
The Butterfly Effect Quotes
Is there any sort of situation where you can say with certainty that a single person is responsible for what happens? Everything in life is dependent on so many different factors that interact in so many different ways.
M.T. Edvardsson
You have been created in order that you might make a difference. You have within you the power to change the world.
Andy Andrews
Every decision or non-decision shifts the Universe in a whole new direction.
Ray A. Davis
I knew the power of a single wish, after all. Invisible and inevitable, like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe and, with that single action changes the weather halfway across the world.
Alice Hoffman
Small shifts in your thinking, and small changes in your energy, can lead to massive alterations of your end result.
Kevin Michel
Butterfly Captions
Just when the caterpillar thought her life was over, she began to fly.
Just winging it.
You still give me the butterflies.
What looks like half a butterfly? The other half.
Never hide your wings.
I’m as anti-social as a butterfly.
It butterfly away.
Happiness is like a butterfly. It comes and rests quietly on your shoulder when you least expect it.
If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.
These are flowers that fly and all but sing.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. (Muhammad Ali)
I’ve got butter things to do.
I am a rare butterfly, too pretty to look just once, yet so hard to catch.
The wings of transformation are born of patience and struggle.
Janet S. Dickens
Butterfly Captions for Instagram
I am a ball of sunshine with a little dash of a hurricane.
And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.
They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.
Social butterflies.
The wings of hope carry us high over the winds of life.
The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you’ve come.
Don’t chase the butterfly. Mend your garden, and let the butterfly come.
Mario Quintana
That’s all on butterflies.
By Emily Ryan
Emily writes about nature, animals, and family.
You’re on our Butterfly Quotes and Instagram Captions page.
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