“You alone are enough, you have nothing to prove to anybody.”.“Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.”.“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”.“I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.”.“The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.”.“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”.“Do the best you can until you know better.“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side.”.“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”.“If we accept being talked to in any kind of way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best.”.If we change our mindset, we can see the whole process – and not just the end product – as beautiful.Īlso Read: 32 More Quotes from Maya Angelou that Contain Powerful Life Lessons. The butterfly cannot reach that level of beauty without the pain that comes with transformation. In fact, it is a fundamental part of being alive.Īs Angelou says, we rarely consider the changes the butterfly goes through. This is good! To change and evolve is a good, and natural, thing. Sometimes you look back on your past selves and not recognise who you were before. In fact, the older you get, the more you realise you don’t know. To live is to keep changing and evolvingĬhange is part of life. We can find wisdom and purpose hidden in our suffering – if we are willing to look for it. It can take something huge to make us stop and ask questions of ourselves: what do we truly believe in? From where do we draw our strength? What do we want to do with our lives, are we going in the right direction? Life can be busy and loud, and we’re constantly distracted. Perhaps the situation in your life is causing you to ask some questions that you have never asked yourself before. If you look deeper, you will find hidden wisdom You may not see the good in what is happening to you right now – but one day your vision might be clearer, and you may be able to see why you needed to go through what you did in order to grow. It is only when you are past the pain that you can understand how it has changed you for the better. Sometimes, we cannot even truly see a situation in our own lives until we have come through the other side. Nobody can see inside a chrysalis as a caterpillar undergoes such seismic change. Things are not always the way that they seem These moments can make us a better version of who we were before.

We can find aspects of ourselves – like strength of character, perseverance, or dedication – from the most challenging times. Sometimes, parts of ourselves can only truly emerge from hard times. Have you ever looked back on a hard times in your life and wondered how you dealt with it? Where you found the strength to continue? Hard times help us to become our true selves But after the initial pain, changes always lead to something beautiful. But just like the caterpillar’s metamorphosis, change can often seem tough in the beginning.Ī new beginning is a good thing, but it often involves the end of something else, and saying goodbye to people or places can be truly painful. It doesn’t sound entirely comfortable, which may be why we don’t like to think about it too much. We do know that the cells begin to self-destruct and are digested to become parts of the butterfly – it rips itself apart to build a new version of itself.

Is it painful for the caterpillar to undergo metamorphosis? Change is painful, but can lead to great beauty Here are five important life lessons about change that we can learn from this quote: 1. Understanding these changes can help us understand the nature of change. This quote by Maya Angelo is powerful as it prompts us to think about the changes a butterfly has gone through to discover its true nature. We know that caterpillars undergo a period of change in their chrysalis to become a butterfly – but we don’t often ponder how brutal that process can be. ‘ The Very Hungry Caterpillar‘ is one of the most popular children’s books of all times, and for many, it was one of the very first books they heard as a child. As Maya Angelou says, do we ever pause to think about how the butterfly becomes so beautiful? Of insects, butterflies are considered one of the most beautiful. Nature gives us many amazing creatures to draw inspiration from. “We Delight In The Beauty Of The Butterfly, But Rarely Admit The Changes It Has Gone Through To Achieve That Beauty”.

Maya angelou inspirational quotes