In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with humans it is the other way around: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.

The aphorism inverts the familiar moral of metamorphosis. In nature, an ungainly larva becomes something more beautiful; Chekhov’s speaker claims that human development often runs in reverse—youthful charm, openness, or idealism hardens into pettiness, cynicism, or moral ugliness with age and social conditioning. The point is less biological than ethical and social: “growth” can mean accumulation of vanity, self-interest, and habit, not wisdom. Read in a Chekhovian key, it also reflects his recurring skepticism about progress in character—how ordinary life, comfort, and compromise can erode the best parts of a person.