Roger Tory Peterson Quotes

Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn't look anything like a butterfly.

He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself. He stayed inside for more than two weeks. Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out and... he was a beautiful butterfly!

Metamorphosis has always been the greatest symbol of change for poets and artists. Imagine that you could be a caterpillar one moment and a butterfly the next.

Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?

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

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.

Do ye not comprehend that we are worms born to bring forth the angelic butterfly that flieth unto judgment without screen?

The three states of the caterpillar, larva, and butterfly have, since the time of the Greek poets, been applied to typify the human being,--its terrestrial form, apparent death, and ultimate celestial destination.

Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.

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

The term 'breakout' always makes me think of an inmate or some butterfly emerging out of a cocoon.

Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem for the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

And besides, look at elder flowers and bluebells-they are a sign that pure creation takes place - even the butterfly. But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings.It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.

To a new generation of butterflies, hopefully less stupid than last. Maybe they were burgeoning even now in fat little cocoons. Or maybe not.

I died from a mineral and plant became, Died from the plant, took a sentient frame; Died from the beast, donned a human dress - When by my dying did I ever grow less.

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.

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

Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.

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.

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.

The butterfly lures us not only because he is beautiful, but because he is transitory. The caterpillar is uglier, but in him we can regard the better joy of becoming.

The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.

If we're so smart and so much better than all the animals, and man rules the world, why can't we just change all the time from, like, a caterpillar to a butterfly?