70+ Butterfly Quotes That’ll Inspire You to Fly

Butterflies symbolize transformation, joy, hope, and freedom. Read butterfly quotes for inspiration to spread your wings and fly.

Butterflies are insects with large and beautiful wings. There are more than 17,000 species.

They go from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. The life cycle ranges from 30 to more than 200 days.

Butterflies represent hope, growth, joy, freedom, and beauty.

Spread your wings with the following butterfly quotes that’ll inspire you.

Butterfly quotes to keep you flying

1. “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

2. “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.” -Richard Bach

3. “Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves.” -Drew Barrymore

4. “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

5. “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” -R. Buckminster Fuller

6. “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” -Maya Angelou

7. “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” -Rabindranath Tagore

8. “Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.” -Vladimir Nabokov

9. “As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people.” -Joseph B. Wirthlin

10. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” -Muhammad Ali

11. “Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies. It creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation.” -Effie Kammenou

12. “How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” -Trina Paulus

13. “Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time.” -Deborah Chaskin

14. “Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness yet still become something beautiful.” -Beau Taplin

15. “If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.” -Wendy Mass

16. “And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.” -Ruskin Bond

17. “Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

18. “Go on, hitch a ride on the back of a butterfly. There’s no better way to fly.” -Patrick Monahan

19. “You do not just wake up and become the butterfly. Growth is a process.” -Rupi Kaur

20. “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” -Carl Sagan

21. “You cannot disrespect the caterpillar and rave about the butterfly.” -Mark Jackson

22. “Until you spread your wings, you’ll have no idea how far you can fly.” -Napoleon Bonaparte

23. “Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come.” -Mário Quintana

24. “I became the butterfly. I got out of the cocoon, and I flew.” -Lynn Redgrave

25. “The butterfly doesn’t fear change, and it doesn’t worry about the past or the future. It is a symbol of the soul and the connection shared by all things.” -Rebecca Keating

26. “Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.” -Kendrick Lamar

27. “A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.” -Mandy Hale

28. “Failure is like a caterpillar before it becomes a butterfly.” -Peta Kelly

29. “The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.” -Guillermo del Toro

30. “Don’t be afraid. ‘Change is such a beautiful thing’, said the Butterfly.” -Sabrina Newby

31. “Butterflies are not called butterflies overnight. They have to undergo tons of changes in order to acquire that name.” -Michael Bassey Johnson

32. “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

33. “A butterfly is a caterpillar who never gave up on his dream to fly.” -Matshona Dhliwayo

34. “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

35. “We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.” -LeeAnn Taylor

36. “Butterflies are self-propelled flowers.” -Robert A. Heinlein

37. “Open your heart and mind like the wings of a butterfly. See then how high you can fly.” -Zeenat Aman

38. “A butterfly symbolizes acceptance of each new phase in life. To keep faith as everything around you changed.” -Lisa Kleypas

39. “Be like a butterfly and a flower – beautiful and sought after, yet unassuming and gentle.” -Jarod Kintz

40. “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

41. “She is like a butterfly. Beautiful to look at but hard to catch.” -Nikki Rowe

42. “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

43. “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

44. “A butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.” -Marlene van Niekerk

45. “I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.” -Charles Dickens

46. “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.” -Aleatha Romig

47. “Change can be beautiful; butterflies are the greatest proof of this.” -Matshona Dhliwayo

48. “If there is one creature that represents my essence, it’s butterflies.” -Patricia Velasquez

49. “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

50. “Butterflies are nature’s angels. They remind us what a gift it is to be alive.” -Robyn Nola

51. “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

52. “If you examine a butterfly according to the laws of aerodynamics, it shouldn’t be able to fly. But the butterfly doesn’t know that, so it flies.” -Howard Schultz

53. “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

54. “Since when does the butterfly ask about the caterpillar?” -Cornelia Funke

55. “Just when the caterpillar thought, “I am incapable of moving,” it became a butterfly.” -Annette Thomas

56. “The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.” -George Carlin

57. “The wings of transformation are born of patience and struggle.” -Janet Dickens

58. “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” -Eckhart Tolle

59. “When a caterpillar changes into a butterfly it loses it’s caterpillar life.” -L. J. Smith

60. “Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.” -George Sand

Butterfly sayings

1. “When you find yourself cocooned in isolation and despair and cannot find your way out of the darkness, remember that this is similar to the place where caterpillars go to grow their wings.”

2. “The butterfly is only beautiful because the caterpillar was brave.”

3. “Love is like a butterfly: It goes where it pleases, and it pleases wherever it goes.”

4. “A butterfly is a miracle, a divine creation that fleets, propelling the caterpillar within, an array of predators it cheats.”

5. “Don’t conform to the world. Be like the butterfly and transform.”

6. “Just when the caterpillar thought her life was over, she began to fly.”

7. “Soar up high with the beauty and grace of a butterfly.”

8. “Like a butterfly, her wings unfolded.”

9. “Let your dreams be your wings.”

10. “What if the change you are avoiding is the one that gives you wings?”

11. “Butterflies remind me that there’s always beauty at the end of all the pain.”

12. “Butterfly kisses and flower petal wishes.”

13. “A butterfly wasn’t always beautiful.”

14. “Becoming a butterfly takes work.”

Final thoughts

Butterflies are bright, beautiful, and unique. Their wings allow them to blend in with foliage to protect them from danger.

They represent hope, freedom, and rejuvenation.

Their life cycle provides a lot of inspiration. Metamorphosis is fascinating and magical.

Butterfly quotes are perfect for inspiration, hope, or reassurance to keep going.

Related: Ram Dass Quotes

Featured image by David Em/Relaxation Hero.