“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Maya Angelou 247
American author and poet 1928–2014Related quotes

“For love and beauty and delight, there is no death nor change.”

1990s, Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere, 1998

“Beauty's of a fading nature
Has a season and is gone!”
Will Ye Go and Marry Katie? (1764)

“When all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.”
Source: Scenes from a Writer's Life

"Social Justice and the Emerging New Age" address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)
1960s
Context: As a preacher... I must admit that I have gone through those moments when I was greatly disappointed with the church and what it has done in this period of social change. We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this. Now, I'm sure that if the church had taken a stronger stand all along, we wouldn't have many of the problems that we have. The first way that the church can repent, the first way that it can move out into the arena of social reform is to remove the yoke of segregation from its own body. Now, I'm not saying that society must sit down and wait on a spiritual and moribund church as we've so often seen. I think it should have started in the church, but since it didn't start in the church, our society needed to move on. The church, itself, will stand under the judgement of God. Now that the mistake of the past has been made, I think that the opportunity of the future is to really go out and to transform American society, and where else is there a better place than in the institution that should serve as the moral guardian of the community. The institution that should preach brotherhood and make it a reality within its own body.