Quotes About Metamorphosis

Endless improvements turn out to be merely endless transformations, thus announcing the uncomfortable truth that identity is permanently insubstantial and mutable.

Passage into new forms, overleaping the bars of time and space, reversal of the laws of inanimate intelligent existence, had been mine to perform and to witness.

He is no longer the prince moon; he is the one of the stars. (Il n'est plus le prince lune ; il est celui des étoiles)

The werewolf by the moon. The wererat by money. (Loup garou par la lune. - Rat garou par les thunes.)

Everything that Mr Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.

I have often remarked- I suppose everybody has- that one's going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for a change in it.

The worm does not his work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame.

It is apparent that "practical" isn't working as well as it used to. Not only because what was once practical is insufficient to our need, but also because it is increasingly impotent in its native realm: the practical is no longer practical. Like it or not, we are being born into a new world.

What is a butterfly? At best He's but a caterpiller drest.

summer leads into autumn autumn leafs into winter winter leans into spring spring leaps into summer

You think it more difficult to turn air into wine than to turn wine into blood?

Feather to fire,fire to blood Blood to bone,bone to marrow Marrow to ashes,ashes to snow

In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats.

but death can't be the final word, can it? I mean, look at this fire. The wood that we threw on it has been decimated, or so it seems, but in reality, the wood has been transformed into gasses and ashes. I think about that, you know, about how nothing is ever destroyed, but only changes form.

The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.

But Felix was no longer Felix. He was a vampire motherfucker.

Yes. The metamorphosis had been successful. Actually, this body might prove to be a new favorite, although she'd taken many shapes in her immortal life. Change was in her nature. It was part of her magic and her favorite game.

Revolution- a principle stepping over vast distances of time.

Samuel Butler had said a century earlier—and did not claim to be the first—that a hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. Butler was quite serious, in his way:

love changes us into something different and something more untaken.

Either we die unto who we were, in order to move to the next stage, or we die through staying stuck, and suffer stasis and stultification.

So in The Thin Red Line 1st/Sgt Warden became 1st/Sgt Welsh, Pvt Prewitt became Pvt Witt, Mess/Sgt Stark became Mess/Sgt Storm. While remaining the same people as before. In Whistle Welsh becomes Mart Winch, Witt becomes Bobby Prell, Storm becomes John Strange.

He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.

God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain.