Quotes about caterpillar (43 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Back To Work

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

World , Depressing

“Come back!" the Caterpillar called after her. "I've something important to say."
This sounded promising, certainly. Alice turned and came back again.
"Keep your temper," said the Caterpillar.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

World

“Keep your temper, said the Caterpillar.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

“The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Silence , Time

“Truth is the precious harvest of the earth.
But once, when harvest waved upon a land,
The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar,
Locusts, and all the swarming foul-born broods,
Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws,
And turned the harvest into pestilence,
Until men said, What profits it to sow?”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Verse heading up the start of Chapter 11 (at page 111)
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

Men , Truth

“The past is an immense area of stony ground that many people would like to drive across as if it were a motorway, while others move patiently from stone to stone, lifting each one because they need to know what lies beneath. Sometimes scorpions crawl out or centipedes, fat white caterpillars or ripe chrysalises, but it's not impossible that, at least once, an elephant might appear…”

José Saramago book The Elephant's Journey

Source: The Elephant's Journey (2008), p. 18

People , Appearance , Past

“And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall,
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call.
Call Alice
When she was just small”

Grace Slick (1939) American musician, writer and painter

White Rabbit (1965)

“The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg; the saint in a selfish human being.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Genius
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: A writer arrived at the monastery to write a book about the Master.
"People say you are a genius. Are you?" he asked.
"You might say so." said the Master, none too modestly.
"And what makes one a genius?" "The ability to recognize." "Recognize what?"
"The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg; the saint in a selfish human being."

Selfishness

“When a caterpillar changes into a butterfly it loses it's caterpillar life.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Life , Change

“Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 1Q84 BOOK 3

“Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (…) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Imagination , Memory

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

Cornelia Funke book The Thief Lord

Source: The Thief Lord

Children

“We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: The Dead of Night

“She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.”

Ken Follett book The Pillars of the Earth

Source: The Pillars of the Earth

Love , Life

“Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Carmilla

Source: Carmilla

World , Girl , Summer

“Look, I guess it's natural, you're teenagers, its springtime, everyone's thoughts are turning to birds and bees and caterpillars and moths…..

- Iggy”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Nature , Bird , Bee

“How does one become a butterfly?" she asked.
"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

Trina Paulus Hope for the Flowers

Variant: How does one become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
Source: Hope for the Flowers

Flying

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Depressing , World

“Since when does the butterfly ask about the caterpillar?”

Cornelia Funke Reckless

Source: Reckless

“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 a butterfly.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

World

“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 book Be Here Now

Source: Be Here Now

Parting

“To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of heaven, is as if the grovelling 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 Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XLV : Reconciliation; Helen to Gilbert

Pleasure , Flowers , Joy

“And then as the other world produces serpents, and vipers, malignant, and venomous creatures, and worms, and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that world produces them, and monsters compiled and complicated of diverse parents, and kinds, so this world, ourselves produces all these in us, in producing diseases and sicknesses of all those sorts; venomous and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases…”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

IV. Mediscque Vocatur; The physician is sent for.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

World , Disease , Parent

“As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 9.

Joy

“Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Inimitable Jeeves

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

Fish

“Father and son you might liken to caterpillars and locusts, for what was left by Robert, his son fed on and devoured.”

Anna Comnena book Alexiad

Of Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund
The Alexiad, Book 1

“It was a cold, disapproving gaze, such as a fastidious luncher who was not fond of caterpillars might have directed at one which he had discovered in his portion of salad…”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Adventures of Sally

The Adventures of Sally (1922)

“We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's cases held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped around two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards, fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

On the family's move from England to Corfu
My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Life , Books , Dogs , Travel

“True transformation occurs only when we can look at ourselves squarely and face our attachments and inner demons, free from the buzz of commercial distraction and false social realities. We have to retreat into our own cocoons and come face-to-face with who we are. We have to turn toward our own inner darkness. For only by abandoning its attachments and facing the darkness does the caterpillar's body begin to spread out and its light, beautiful wings begin to form.”

Julia Butterfly Hill book The Legacy of Luna

Source: The Legacy of Luna (2000), Ch. 8

Beauty , Reality , Light , Falseness

“It seems curious that we know so much about sheep, so little about those animals which outweigh them per hectare by factors of ten or a hundred times, and that we do not investigate these matters far more seriously. Our most sustainable yields may be grubs or caterpillars rather than sheep; we can convert these invertebrates to use by feeding them to poultry or fish. We can't go wrong in encouraging a complex of life in soils, from roots and mycorrhiza to moles and earthworms, and in thinking of ways in which soil life assists us to produce crop, it itself becomes a crop.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 8.12

Life , Way , Thinking , Fish

“Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understand each word the caterpillar said,Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed.”

Shel Silverstein (1930–1999) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Secret , Smile , Flowers , Understanding

“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 caterpillar and a butterfly, caterpillar by day, butterfly by night”

Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French fashion designer

Statement in the 1920s as quoted in Chanel (1987) by Jean Leymari

Love , Fashion , Flying , Night

“Say, take Rachel Corrie, local young woman, she was extremely courageous. She's a martyr for peace and justice. We happened to kill her too, even if we don't like to admit it. She was killed by U. S. sent equipment, which is Caterpillar…
[Q: you draw that line right back to you and me sitting here? ] Absolutely, we're responsible for it. I mean, we didn't drive the bulldozer, but why is it there? What's it doing? Who provides the military, economic, and diplomatic support for destroying the occupied territories?”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2005, Interview by Steve Scher on KUOW, 2004

Peace , Justice , Courage , Support

“This was your butterfly, you see—
His fine wings made him vain:
The caterpillars crawl, but he
Passed them in rich disdain.—
My pretty boy says, “Let him be
Only a worm again!”

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836–1919) American writer

After Wings (1892).

Boy

“Once a lonely caterpillar sat and cried”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Quentin Tarantino on media criticisms of animal exploitation in his movies.

“A question arises regarding the angels who dwell with us, serve us and protect us, whether their joys are equal to those of the angels in heaven, or whether they are diminished by the fact that they protect and serve us. No, they are certainly not; for the work of the angels is the will of God, and the will of God is the work of the angels; their service to us does not hinder their joy nor their working. If God told an angel to go to a tree and pluck caterpillars off it, the angel would be quite ready to do so, and it would be his happiness, if it were the will of God.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon IV : True Hearing
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)

God , Angels , Question , Tree

“My general expression is that all human beings who can do anything; and dogs that track unseen quarry, and homing pigeons, and bird-charming snakes, and caterpillars who transform into butterflies, are magicians.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Ch. 27 http://www.resologist.net/talent27.htm
Wild Talents (1932)
Context: My general expression is that all human beings who can do anything; and dogs that track unseen quarry, and homing pigeons, and bird-charming snakes, and caterpillars who transform into butterflies, are magicians. … Considering modern data, it is likely that many of the fakirs of the past, who are now known as saints, did, or to some degree did, perform the miracles that have been attributed to them. Miracles, or stunts, that were in accord with the dominant power of the period were fostered, and miracles that conflicted with, or that did not contribute to, the glory of the Church, were discouraged, or were savagely suppressed. There could be no development of mechanical, chemical, or electric miracles —
And that, in the succeeding age of Materialism — or call it the Industrial Era — there is the same state of subservience to a dominant, so that young men are trained to the glory of the job, and dream and invent in fields that are likely to interest stockholders, and are schooled into thinking that all magics, except their own industrial magics, are fakes, superstitions, or newspaper yarns.

Dogs , Home , Bird

“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Letter https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2814.xml to Asa Gray, 22 May 1860
Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements

Cats , God

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Positive

“Even the caterpillar must endure the dark journey before gaining wings and transforming into a butterfly. It is their spiritual struggle in life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“The caterpillar achieves its full freedom and potential by transforming into a butterfly. This is the real beauty of change.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Freedom , Beauty , Change