Butterfly Quotations | Page 5

I never think about any of my accomplishments and I always get butterflies in my stomach and I never get too comfortable with the status.

I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn't want to go on!

Frogs eat Butterflies, Snakes eat Frogs, Hogs eat Snakes, Men eat Hogs.

For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone. "What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; each word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown sea. Hypnotized by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discovery of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. When the butterfly flew away, she rose, and within, her two books beneath her arm returned again, much as a soldier prepares for battle.

...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.

Dada is not modern at all, it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada puts an artificial sweetness onto things, a snow of butterflies coming out of a conjurer's skull. Dada is stillness and does not understand the passions.

Butterflies doing strange things in very beautiful ways were in my mind when I sat down, but by the time my pen was uncapped my thoughts had shifted to rocks.

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.

The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly's bloom.

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

They [the children] live in a world of delightful imagination; they pursue persons and objects that never existed; they make an Argosy laden with gold out of a floating butterfly,--and these stupid [grown-up people] try to translate these things into uninteresting facts.

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

If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor's mailbox.

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .

To have an inner life, to think, to juggle and leap, to become a tightrope walker in the world of ideas. To attack, to riposte, to refute, what a contest, what acclaim. To understand. The most generous word of all. Memory. To retain, a geyser of felicity. Intelligence. The agonizing poverty of my mind. Words and ideas flitting in and out like butterflies. My brain a dandelion seed blown in the wind.

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now 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.

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly...

Once I dreamed I was a butterfly, and now I no longer know whether I am Chuang Tzu, who dreamed I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu.

Am I a human dreaming I am a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I am a human?

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakeable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.

Who when examining in the cabinet of the entomologist the gay and exotic butterflies, and singular cicadas, will associate with these lifeless objects, the ceaseless harsh music of the latter, and the lazy flight of the former - the sure accompaniments of the still, glowing noonday of the tropics.

You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.

There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.

Poetry is an enumeration of birds, bees, babies, butterflies, bugs, bambinos, babayagas, and bipeds, beating their way up bewildering bastions.

So we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies.

No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.

We will all laugh at gilded butterflies.

After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.

When I think of mystery, I don't think about myself. I think of the universe, like why does the moon rise when the sun falls? Caterpillars turn into butterflies? I really haven't remained a recluse.

There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. Fashion is at once a captapillar and a butterfly, caterpillar by day, butterfly by night

What is a butterfly? At best He's but a caterpiller drest. The gaudy Fop's his picture just.

Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?

In my world, everyone's a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies!

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.

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

Everything that Mr Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.

Now I am in the garden at the back . . . a very preserve of butterflies as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate . . . where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unnerved.

The toad beneath the harrow knows / Exactly where each tooth-point goes; / The butterfly upon the road / Preaches contentment to that toad.

I'll be floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee.

Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

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

I will become a firefly and even in the day my glow will be seen in spite of the sun. Let others be as butterflies who preen their wings yet depend on the charity of a flower for life.

Braving obstacles and hardships is nobler than retreat to tranquility. The butterfly that hovers around the lamp until it dies is more admirable than the mole that lives in a dark tunnel.

I remember one thing that marred this time for me; the movie "Gone with the Wind." When it played in Mason [MI], I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug.

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. 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.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see.

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.

I had longed to be a butterfly, and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkaed and schoisched with a step peculiar to myself - and the kangaroo.

There is a tiny yellow daffodil, The butterfly can see it from afar, Although one summer evening's dew could fill Its little cup twice over, ere the star Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, And be no prodigal.

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

Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.

Death is simply a shedding of the physical body, like the butterfly coming out of a cocoon. . . . It's like putting away your winter coat when spring comes.

Success is not something you pursue. What you pursue will elude you; it can be like trying to chase butterflies. Success is something you attract by the person you become.

Butterflies and zebras And moonbeams and fairy tales That's all she ever thinks about Riding with the wind.

I would much rather fight pride than vanity, because pride has a stand-up way of fighting. You know where it is. It throws its black shadow on you, and you are not at a loss where to strike. But vanity is that delusive, that insectiferous, that multiplied feeling, and men that fight vanities are like men that fight midges and butterflies. It is easier to chase them than to hit them.

A power of Butterfly must be - The Aptitude to fly Meadows of Majesty concedes And easy Sweeps of Sky -

In the name of the bee And of the butterfly And of the breeze, amen!

A soft Sea washed around the House A Sea of Summer Air And rose and fell the magic Planks That sailed without a care — For Captain was the Butterfly For Helmsman was the Bee And an entire universe For the delighted crew.

Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.

A butterfly flitting from flower to flower ever remains mine, I lose the one that is netted by me.

Poems On Time The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth. Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

And many an ante-natal tomb Where butterflies dream of the life to come.

There is no help for you, outside yourself; You are the creator of the universe.

There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself.... Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.

Butterflies...flowers that fly and all but sing.

The eye of a man should be still more reverent before the rising of a young maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of touch should increase respect. The down of the peach, the dust of the plum, the radiated crystal of snow, the butterfly’s wing powdered with feathers, are gross things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste. The young maiden is only the glimmer of a dream and is not yet statue. Her alcove is hidden in the shadows of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of the eye desecrates this dim penumbra. Here, to gaze, is to profane.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in the wind and cling Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

As those who have seen Jurassic Park will know, this means a tiny disturbance in one place, can cause a major change in another. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain in Central Park, New York. The trouble is, it is not repeatable. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, a host of other things will be different, which will also influence the weather. That is why weather forecasts are so unreliable.

I drank that Wine of which the Soul is its vessel. Its ecstasy has stolen my intellect away. A Light came and kindled a Flame in the depth of my Soul. A Light so radiant that the sun orbits around it like a butterfly.

If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.

Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime - and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.

Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.

Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse,

Kill not the moth nor butterfly, For the Last Judgement draweth nigh.

This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands.

And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey....

I've watched you now a full half-hour; Self-poised upon that yellow flower And, little Butterfly! Indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! - not frozen seas More motionless! and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again!

The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home.