"You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us."
— Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass)

"Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days."
— Ellen DeGeneres (The Funny Thing Is...)

"Butterflies are self propelled flowers. "
— R.H. Heinlein

"She liked being reminded of butterflies. She remembered being six or seven and crying over the fates of the butterflies in her yard after learning that they lived for only a few days. Her mother had comforted her and told her not to be sad for the butterflies, that just because their lives were short didn't mean they were tragic. Watching them flying in the warm sun among the daisies in their garden, her mother had said to her, see, they have a beautiful life. Alice liked remembering that."
— Lisa Genova (Still Alice)

"He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival."
— Gemma Malley (The Declaration)

"It was then that she realized that the yellow butterflies preceded the appearances of Mauricio Babilonia."
— Gabriel García Márquez

"Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder..."
— Henry David Thoreau

""They're butterflies because...well, he thought it was cool. They eat humans."
-idk....."
— Katsura Hoshino (D.Gray-Man, Volume 11)