Worm To Butterfly Quotes

It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then...and then -- ah -- we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves.

I don’t know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate…

Perceive ye not that we are worms, designed To form the angelic butterfly, that goes To judgment, leaving all defence behind? Why doth your mind take such exalted pose, Since ye, disabled, are as insects, mean As worm which never transformation knows?

I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg. I Name you Calvin. I Name you Mr. Jenkins. I Name you Proginoskes. I fill you with Naming. Be! Be, butterfly and behemoth, be galaxy and grasshopper, star and sparrow, you matter, you are, be! Be caterpillar and comet, Be porcupine and planet, sea sand and solar system, sing with us, dance with us, rejoice with us, for the glory of creation, seagulls and seraphim angle worms and angel host, chrysanthemum and cherubim. (O cherubim.) Be! Sing for the glory of the living and the loving the flaming of creation sing with us dance with us be with us. Be!" - Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

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

I feel like a pink worm in the core of this green room, as though I have eaten my way in and should be working on becoming a butterfly, or something. I’m not real awake, here, at the moment. I hear somebody coughing. I hear my heart beating and the high-pitched sound which is my nervous system doing its thing. Oh, God, let today be a normal day. Let me be normally befuddled, normally nervous; get me to the church on time, in time. Let me not startle anyone, especially myself. Let me get through our wedding day as best I can, with no special effects. Deliver Clare from unpleasant scenes. Amen.

You know, there's a place we all inhabit, but we don't much think about it, we're scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day. It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are, for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be.

And if some savage told us of a mag-ical worm that built a little windowless house, slept there a season, thenone day emerged and flew away as a jeweled bird, we'd laugh at suchsuperstition if we'd never seen a butterfly.

I like to imagine the impact I’ve made on the world. What possible realities am I pruning, what events am I setting in motion, each time I take a life? If the flap of a butterfly’s wing can alter the course of a hurricane, what am I doing when I take a human life? The life of a person who interacts with dozens of people every day, who would have a career, romance, children?

What have you done? If you clip the wings of a butterfly, it has become a worm. And because the butterfly will not live as the lives, it will die.

In a world where nothing exists by itself, where every division of one thing from another is a misperception - or misconception - of the way things really are, there are no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind. We cannot, for example, draw a line around the eyes that is not necessarily arbitrary. There is no point at which the eyes begin or end, either in time or in space or conceptually. The eye bone is connected to the face bone, and the face bone is connected to the head bone, and the head bone is connected to the neck bone, and so it goes down to the toe bone, the floor bone, the earth bone, the worm bone, the dreaming butterfly bone. Thus, what we call our eyes are so many bubbles in a sea of foam. This is not only true of our eyes but of our other powers of sensation as well, including the mind.

The second Mrs. Helstone, inversing the natural order of insect existence, would have fluttered through the honeymoon a bright, admired butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days a sordid trampled worm.

With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a poor discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable.

For the author as for God, standing outwith his creation, all times are one; all times are now. In mine own country, we accept as due and right – as very meet, right, and our bounden duty – the downs and their orchids and butterflies, the woods and coppices, ash, beech, oak, and field maple, rowan, wild cherry, holly, and hazel, bluebells in their season and willow, alder, and poplar in the wetter ground. We accept as proper and unremarkable the badger and the squirrel, the roe deer and the rabbit, the fox and the pheasant, as the companions of our walks and days. We remark with pleasure, yet take as granted, the hedgerow and the garden, the riot of snowdrops, primroses, and cowslips, the bright flash of kingfishers, the dart of swallows and the peaceful homeliness of house martins, the soft nocturnal glimmer of glow worm and the silent nocturnal swoop of owl.

A caterpillar knows it's a butterfly, even if the whole world tries to convince it that it's just a worm.

What have you done? If you clip the wings of a butterfly, it is no longer a butterfly, it has become a worm. And because it will not live as the worm lives, it will rather die.

An ambitious worm is better than a complacent butterfly.

After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous, and spicy delights of the soil.

1058 Bloom—is Result—to meet a Flower And casually glance Would scarcely cause one to suspect The minor Circumstance Assisting in the Bright Affair So intricately done Then offered as a Butterfly To the Meridian— To pack the Bud—oppose the Worm— Obtain its right of Dew— Adjust the Heat—elude the Wind— Escape the prowling Bee Great Nature not to disappoint Awaiting Her that Day— To be a Flower, is profound Responsibility—

Be kind and corteous to this gentleman; Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; The honey bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen tights, And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, To have my love to bed and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

The turning points in life, the really important decisions, are rarely dramatic. The first time someone tries heroin isn’t life-altering, but the three-hundredth time, the time their heart stops, sure is. Every human is an unwieldy vessel, weighed down with hopes and dreams. We turn so slowly that we don’t even realise we are moving at all. We creatures of habit, our momentum is all-consuming. For every action there are consequences we could never anticipate; it’s how we grow, each of us, from worms into butterflies, flapping our wings and making tornadoes on the other side of the world.

No, let’s be fair,” I said. “Being a villain’s an option.” “You did not say that,” Fox-mask said, incredulous, “It’s not an option at all.” The girl in blue looked at Mrs. Yamada, “Ex-villain’s corrupting the kids, and you’re not stopping her?” Mrs. Yamada was frowning at me. “I’m going somewhere with this, honest,” I said. “If you’re sure,” she said. “I can stop you at any time.” “You can.” I looked at the gathered kids. A few of the less successful butterfly catchers had drifted away and approached. “I always hated the speeches when I was in school, the preaching in auditoriums, the one-note message. Stuff like saying drugs are bad. It’s wrong. Drugs are fantastic.” “Um,” Fox-mask said. Mrs. Yamada was glaring at me, but she hadn’t interrupted. “People wouldn’t do them if they weren’t. They make you feel good, make your day brighter, give you energy-” “Weaver,” Mrs. Yamada cut in. “-until they don’t,” I said. “People hear the message that drugs are bad, that they’ll ruin your life if you do them once. And then you find out that isn’t exactly true because your friends did it and turned out okay, or you wind up trying something and you’re fine. So you try them, try them again. It isn’t a mind-shattering moment of horrible when you try that first drug. Or so I hear. It’s subtle, it creeps up on you, and you never really get a good, convincing reason to stop before it ruins your life beyond comprehension. I never went down that road, but I knew a fair number of people who did. People who worked for me, when I was a supervillain.

oh heck, it’s like worms and butterflies, love. You know.” “Caterpillars,” said Maeve. “I think you mean caterpillars and butterflies.” “Er, that sounds right,” said Morris’s voice over the telephone. “Caterpillars. That was what I meant. So what do worms turn into, then?” “They don’t turn into anything, Morris,” said Maeve, a little testily. “They’re just worms.” The

Be kind and corteous to this gentleman; Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyews; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; The honey bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen tights, And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, To have my love to bed and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

He was forever wallowing in the mire, dirtying his nose, scrabbling his face, treading down the backs of his shoes, gaping at flies and chasing the butterflies (over whom his father held sway); he would pee in his shoes, shit over his shirt-tails, [wipe his nose on his sleeves,] dribble snot into his soup and go galumphing about. [He would drink out of his slippers, regularly scratch his belly on wicker-work baskets, cut his teeth on his clogs, get his broth all over his hands, drag his cup through his hair, hide under a wet sack, drink with his mouth full, eat girdle-cake but not bread, bite for a laugh and laugh while he bit, spew in his bowl, let off fat farts, piddle against the sun, leap into the river to avoid the rain, strike while the iron was cold, dream day-dreams, act the goody-goody, skin the renard, clack his teeth like a monkey saying its prayers, get back to his muttons, turn the sows into the meadow, beat the dog to teach the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch himself where he ne’er did itch, worm secrets out from under your nose, let things slip, gobble the best bits first, shoe grasshoppers, tickle himself to make himself laugh, be a glutton in the kitchen, offer sheaves of straw to the gods, sing Magnificat at Mattins and think it right, eat cabbage and squitter puree, recognize flies in milk, pluck legs off flies, scrape paper clean but scruff up parchment, take to this heels, swig straight from the leathern bottle, reckon up his bill without Mine Host, beat about the bush but snare no birds, believe clouds to be saucepans and pigs’ bladders lanterns, get two grists from the same sack, act the goat to get fed some mash, mistake his fist for a mallet, catch cranes at the first go, link by link his armour make, always look a gift horse in the mouth, tell cock-and-bull stories, store a ripe apple between two green ones, shovel the spoil back into the ditch, save the moon from baying wolves, hope to pick up larks if the heavens fell in, make virtue out of necessity, cut his sops according to his loaf, make no difference twixt shaven and shorn, and skin the renard every day.]

If you don’t make a move on Lark, I’m going to hook you two up. Don’t make me stoop to that shit, man. Bad enough I’m helping Tucker find a decent fuck for Bailey. I really don’t need to play matchmaker with you too.” “I’ve got it handled.” Cooper smirked. “Lark’s coming to your shop to get a tat fixed. You’re welcome for that.” “What?” I muttered, frowning even if this idea interested me. “She’s got a lame worm tat and needs it fixed. She works at that Denny’s and can’t afford it, so I said I would pay. I like paying for chicks to get nice tats. Makes me feel charitable.” “It’s a worm?” I asked, wondering why Lark would have a fucking worm tattoo. “Looks like one. I think it was supposed to be a butterfly. I can’t remember. Farah got all territorial and I about jizzed my pants.” “Too much fucking info, man,” I said, emphasizing each word. “Whatever. Just make sure you look your best when she shows up. I don’t want you scaring her away. She’s cute and available and I don’t want Vaughn messing with Lark. He’s trouble and will eat her alive.” Even though I said nothing, Cooper started laughing. “You’re jealous.” Exhaling hard, I flipped him off again, but he just kept laughing. “Yeah, well, you better get that girl or I might set her up with someone from the club. Judd still gets weird around Mac. Need to get him a woman so Judd won’t kill him on accident one day,” Cooper said, air quoting “accident.” Leaning back, I doodled on my napkin until I realized I was drawing Lark again. Cooper didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy frowning at his phone. “Problem?” “More shit from the Devils. They’re pushing and we’ll need to push back. Might need to call someone in to go to Tucson to handle the problem at the top.” “Someone?” “Don’t you worry. Business shit.” “Now, you’re secretive. Where was this when you were talking about jazzing your pants.

While we all grow and mature and change from that awkward little worm we were in high school, it is still a pretty consistent indicator of who we become as adult butterflies. High school sets a tone for how the next decade of your life plays out, good or bad. It is the first set of steps in your journey. If you want to know who you were as a person during this hormonal time, refer to your yearbook. You will find a theme and you will see a pattern. Most definitely, you will notice these themes and patterns carried on into your twenties and so on. Take those signatures serious.

...come to think about it, maybe there are a slim chances for you salvation. Don't the butterflies have at the beginning of their life the form of a hairy worms?

He smiles. I sit a few feet away and watch as he unpacks the linen bag. “Torin packed this, not Rayna, so who knows what we’ll find.” “Eye of newt and toe of frog,” I mutter. “Wool of bat and tongue of dog.” He smiles, waiting for me to pick up the next verse. “Sorry. That’s all I know.” He props his arms on his knees. “‘Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,’” he continues, affecting a macabre tone, “‘lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing, for a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.’” “Yum. Breakfast of champions. Is howlet an owl?” “It is indeed.” “And blind worm must be a snake?” “No. Blind worms are lizards with no legs.” “That makes sense. That’s why those were added separately—the lizard legs.” “No respectable brew is complete without them.” “There should be some soft ingredients in there for flavor balance, like butterfly wings and dove’s feathers.” His eyebrows rise. “You’d eat butterfly wings?” “Never. I don’t know why I said that. I love butterflies.” “A symbol of rebirth and resurrection, I might add.” “Subtle, Samrael. Real subtle.” I catch myself smiling. But if he’s good—if he’s really changed—then smiling is fine. Right?

Learn to discern or differentiate between a worm and a caterpillar.

So this is how you've been living,' the little imp grumbles. 'A worm in a butterfly's cocoon.

For centuries, naturalists and philosophers have struggled to make sense of the range of life on Earth. One of the earliest and most pervasive ideas was that of a ‘Scale of Nature’ in which living, and sometimes non-living, things were arranged into a linear hierarchy. Each ascending rung on a ladder represented increasing ‘advancement’, based on a blend of anatomical complexity, religious significance, and practical usefulness. The idea had its origins in the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, but was crystallized by the work of the 18th-century Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet. In Bonnet’s scheme, the Scale of Nature rose from earth and metals, to stones and salts, and stepwise through fungi, plants, sea anemones, worms, insects, snails, reptiles, water serpents, fish, birds, and finally mammals, with man sitting comfortably on top. Or almost on top, being marginally trumped by angels and archangels. It is easy to ridicule such ideas today, but Bonnet had a good knowledge of the natural world. For example, it was Bonnet who discovered asexual reproduction in aphids and the way that butterflies and their caterpillars breathe. Furthermore, the idea of a Scale of Nature still pervades much modern writing, with many scientists talking of ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ animals: language that bears an uncanny resemblance to this old and discredited idea.

And now let me collect my strength and my thoughts and focus with everything I have on the horror of our earthly existence, on the imperfection of the world, on the myriad lives torn asunder, on the beasts that devour one another, on the snake that bites a stag as it grazes in the shade, on the wolves that slaughter sheep, on the mantises that consume their males, on the bees that die once they sting, on the mothers who labor to bring us into the world, on the blind kittens children toss into rivers, on the terror of the fish in the whale's entrails and the terror of the beaching whale, on the sadness of an elephant dying of old age, on the butterfly's fleeting joy, on the deceptive beauty of the flower, on the fleeting illusion of a lover's embrace, on the horror of spilt seed, on the impotence of the aging tiger, on the rotting of teeth in the mouth, on the myriad dead leaves lining the forest floor, on the fear of the fledgling when its mother pushes it out of the nest, on the infernal torture of the worm baking in the sun as if roasting in living fire, on the anguish of a lover's parting, on the horror known by lepers, on the hideous metamorphoses of women's breasts, on wounds, on the pain of the blind...

I often get letters from people who say how they like the programs a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature, to which I reply and say, "Well, it's funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the almighty, always quote beautiful things, they always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses." But I always have to think, too, of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he's five years old, and I reply and say, "Well, presumably the god you speak about created the worm as well," and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful god with that action.

Passing from this world into eternity is like being a small seed. When we pass into eternity, we will grow as a beautiful flower. Recall that a squirmy worm transforms itself into a beautiful butterfly. Our present state is similar to a seed that God tends with great care. He is watering us and feeding our souls. Upon death, we will sprout forth and grow throughout eternity, growing beautiful, ever becoming like Christ. As that crawling caterpillar transforms itself a butterfly, so also does the soul of a Christian passing from this world into the next world.

As soon as you ascend to heaven in spirit, by being more spiritual and honest with yourself, you will notice that hell comes to you at the exact same time, and earth will literally feel like hell. Everyone that can't see it went on the opposite direction, from crazy to crazier. They see butterflies instead of worms and juice instead of blood, and can't smell their own rotting flesh. They went from surviving to becoming zombies. That's why I despite the vast majority of those that consider themselves spiritual. They are in fact lunatics disguised as saints.

It’s in the morning, for most of us. It’s that time, those few seconds when we’re coming out of sleep but we’re not really awake yet. For those few seconds we’re something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are, for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then…