Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly...
Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things; for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead; symmetrical but stiff.
Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.
After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of the flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous, and spicy delights of the soil.
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.
No sun, no moon, no morn, no noon, No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day, . . . . . . No road, no street, no t' other side the way, . . . . . . No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no buds.
While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.
Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?
You're beautiful, but you're empty...One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose.
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.
I feel like the spirit of the butterfly transferred itself to me.
I feel most sexy when I'm in love. My stomach flips. I get butterflies.
Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see.
Frogs eat Butterflies, Snakes eat Frogs, Hogs eat Snakes, Men eat Hogs.
We are definitely living in the butterfly effect theory, where any change that is made in the past is going to have a very logical cause-and-effect ramification of the present.
How passionately we love everything that cannot last: the dazzling crystallory of winter, the spring in bloom, the fragile flight of butterflies, crimson sunsets, a kiss, and life.
Love is like a butterfly As soft and gentle as a sigh The multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings Love makes your heart feel strange inside It flutters like soft wings in flight Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.
The quivering of Psyche's butterflies.
I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round.
Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days.
History is often the tale of small moments—chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence—that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that triggers a hurricane.
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.
Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!
I meant to do my work today But a brown bird sang in the apple tree And a butterfly flitted across the field And all the leaves were calling me.
