These Caterpillar quotes will inspire you. Caterpillars are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths).
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and caterpillar quotes, caterpillar sayings, and caterpillar proverbs.
Inspirational Caterpillar Quotes
- “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
- “God changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls, and coal into diamonds using time and pressure. He’s working on you, too.” ~ Rick Warren
- “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.” ~ Richard Bach
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“The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.” ~ George Carlin
- “All human beings have the ability to transform like a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon and taking to the sky.” ~ Jim Rohn
- “Around us, life bursts with miracles, a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops.” ~ Nhat Hanh
- “The great loneliness- like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we too must go through such a time when life, as we have known it is over when being a caterpillar, feels somehow false, and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.” ~ Elizabeth Lesser
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“Keep your temper, said the Caterpillar.” ~ Lewis Carroll
- “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” story is about hope. You, like the little caterpillar, will grow up, unfold your wings and fly off into the future” ~ Eric Carle, The very hungry caterpillar quotes
- “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 Hill
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“We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.” ~ John Marsden
- “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly” ~ Andre Gide, Caterpillar quotes butterfly
- “Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies. It creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation.” ~ Stephanie Pace Marshall, Caterpillar quotes wings
- “Around us, life bursts with miracles–a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.” ~ Nhat Hanh
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“It is in being the caterpillar that you become the butterfly.” ~ John Harricharan
- “Fighting has taught me that the caterpillar takes a while to turn into a majestic butterfly.” ~ Jesse Taylor
- “Why is a caterpillar wrapped in silk while it changes into a butterfly? So the other caterpillars can’t hear the screams. Change hurts” ~ Rory Miller
- “Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae,’ there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.” ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky
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“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore
- “Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.” ~ Kendrick Lamar
- “Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understood 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. Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets, And joined the crying of each falling dying flake of snow, Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . . How did it go? How did it go?” ~ Shel Silverstein
- “Forgetting is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was & there was only ever a butterfly.” ~ Robert Jackson Bennett
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“If everyone is speaking caterpillar, don’t be afraid to speak butterfly. When it’s time to awaken, nothing else will suit you.” ~ Tama J. Kieves
- “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.” ~ Zhuangzi
- “Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” ~ Andre Gide
- “The caterpillars of the commonwealth,
Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.” ~ William Shakespeare -
“They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods” ~ Edith Wharton
- “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
- “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
- “To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven is as if the groveling 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 Bronte
- “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.” ~ Shel Silverstein
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“I’m a social caterpillar. I am not a social butterfly” ~ Harry Turtledove
- “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.” ~ Charles Darwin
- “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 the butterfly.” ~ Richard Bach
- “The caterpillar dies so the butterfly could be born. And, yet, the caterpillar lives in the butterfly and they are but one. So, when I die, it will be that I have been transformed from the caterpillar of earth to the butterfly of the universe.” ~ John Harricharan
- “I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar” ~ Robert Wyatt
- “The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.” ~ Ponce Denis Ecouchard Lebrun -
“As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.” ~ William Blake
- “Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow. The caterpillar will become a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You will no longer have to prove you’re good enough. When you embrace your shadow you will no longer have to life in fear. Find the gifts of your shadow and you will finally revel in all the glory of your true self. Then you will have the freedom to create the life you have always desired.” ~ Debbie Ford
- “The colors of insects and many smaller animals contribute to conceal them from the larger ones which prey upon them. Caterpillars which feed on leaves are generally green; and earth-worms the color of the earth which they inhabit; butter-flies, which frequent flowers, are colored like them; small birds which frequent hedges have greenish backs like the leaves, and light-colored bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk who passes under them or over them.” ~ Erasmus Darwin
- “Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look at me: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird whose wings are still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.” ~ Nhat Hanh -
“Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “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.” ~ Bob Dylan
- “Church members are either pillars or caterpillars. The pillars hold up the church, and the caterpillars just crawl in and out.” ~ Grenville Kleiser
- “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, Caterpillar quotes Alice in wonderland
- “Grown-ups love figures… When you tell them you’ve made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? ” Instead they demand “How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? ” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn’t look anything like a butterfly.” ~ Lynn Margulis
- “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
- “Choice. It’s the word that allows yes and the word that makes no possible. It’s the word that puts the free in freedom and takes obligation out of the mix. It’s the word upon which adventure, exhilaration, and authenticity depend. It’s the word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.” ~ Tom Robbins
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“If a caterpillar doesn’t know its future has wings, it hardly experiences itself as land-bound.” ~ Robert Kagan
- “One can study a caterpillar forever and never be able to predict a butterfly.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
- “The Caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly” ~ Timothy Leary
- “When someone comes to you with big dreams, don’t be too quick to belittle their ambition and dreams. Inspire and help them in any way you can. Even the beautiful butterfly was once a caterpillar.” ~ Rita Zahara
- “In nature, a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.” ~ Anton Chekhov, Caterpillar quotes nature
- “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
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“Afraid? Me? A man who’s licked his weight in wild caterpillars?” ~ Groucho Marx
- “We are like caterpillars contemplating pupation.” ~ Terence McKenna
- “The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.” ~ Guillermo del Toro
- “Caterpillar was quite important because that was the first manufacturing industry that used Reaganite strike-breaking techniques. They illegally called in scabs to break a major strike. It was reported pretty well in the Chicago Tribune, who pointed out something very interesting. They said that the workers got very little support in Peoria when scabs illegally broke the strike, and that was particularly striking because that whole community had been built up by the union – it was a union-based community.” ~ Noam Chomsky
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“One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and – pop! – out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.” ~ Eric Carle
- “When a caterpillar eats a leaf, then a thrush eats the caterpillar, or when a hawk eats the thrush only 5 to 20% of usable energy is transferred from one level to the next. … Thus herbivores will account for a much smaller fraction of the biomass [than plants] and the carnivores for a still smaller fraction.” ~ Richard Heinberg
- “We are living in a world that is in the late stage of a Caterpillar. It is very important to let go of the old and start to gravitate to the new because we are leaving behind a world that is no longer sustainable and moving into a world in which we can thrive.” ~ Bruce H. Lipton
- “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.” ~ Anthony de Mello
- “Love seems to beautify and inspire all nature. It raises the earthly caterpillar into the ethereal butterfly, it paints the feathers in spring, it lights the glowworm’s lamp, it wakens the song of birds and inspires the poet’s lay. Even inanimate Nature seems to feel the spell, and flowers glow with the richest colors.” ~ John Lubbock
