Galway Kinnell Quotes

It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.

I have a little brown cocoon of an idea that may possibly expand into a magnificent moth of fulfilment.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

In 2016, I was pretty green. I was budding. Some flowers were shooting off.

Emptiness is bound to bloom, like hundreds of grasses blossoming.

You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more.

The shell must break before the bird can fly.

A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.

We are like caterpillars contemplating pupation.

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

A child. . . opens and closes like a blossom.

Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms; If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume, to you; If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and trees.

We all have to go through the tumbler a few times before we can emerge as a crystal.

Oh, the glory of growth, silent, mighty, persistent, inevitable! To awaken, to open up like a flower to the light of a fuller consciousness!

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

A seed knows how to wait... A seed is alive while it waits.

As you grow and get older, you evolve.

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.

God changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls and coal into diamonds using time and pressure. He's working on you, too.

A human being is like a seed. Either you can keep it as it is, or you can make it grow into a wonderful tree with flowers and fruits.

Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak.

The beast that bears you fastest to perfection is suffering.

Convention is like the shell to the chick, a protection till he is strong enough to break it through.

The tallest oak tree once was an acorn that any pig could have swallowed.