These 44 Movie Quotes Hit So Hard They’ll Stay With You Forever

There’s something magical about the movies.

For a few hours, we get to live other lives, feel other feelings,

and see the world through different eyes.

But sometimes, a film does more than just entertain us.

It reaches through the screen and plants a seed of truth in our minds.

It’s not always a short, punchy one-liner; often,

it’s a longer passage—a monologue or a heartfelt confession—that captures

a feeling we’ve always had but never been able to name.

Quotes

Here are 44 mid-to-long length quotes that have etched themselves into memory forever.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” — Roy Batty, Blade Runner

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” — Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

“Get busy living, or get busy dying. That’s goddamn right.” — Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” — Aibileen Clark, The Help

“Of all the forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” — John “The Narrator” Nash, A Beautiful Mind (paraphrasing Bertrand Russell)

“The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it.” — Rafiki, The Lion King

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

“I don’t want to survive. I want to live.” — Captain Koenig, 12 Years a Slave

“Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without. If you don’t start with that, what are you going to end up with?” — Uncle Bill, Meet Joe Black

“It is not our abilities that show what we truly are. It is our choices.” — Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“After all, tomorrow is another day!” — Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind

“You can’t live your life for other people. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.” — The Notebook, The Notebook

“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.” — Stephen King, The Shawshank Redemption (Red’s Narration)

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” — Moulin Rouge, Moulin Rouge!

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” — Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” — Walter Mitty, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“Some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first.” — Sean Maguire, Good Will Hunting

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.” — Gordon Gekko, Wall Street

“You bow to no one.” — Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

“I think you have to take the oak and you have to build the ship. And I don’t know if you’re going to get where you want to go, but I know you can’t stay in the harbor.” — The Finest Hours

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” — Carl Jung, A Dangerous Method (paraphrased)

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” — The Fox, The Little Prince

“I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.” — Captain Benjamin L. Willard, Apocalypse Now

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” — Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

“The things you own end up owning you.” — Tyler Durden, Fight Club

“Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn’t make you who you are. It is the rest of your story, who you choose to be.” — Soothsayer, Kung Fu Panda 2

“Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” — Rocky Balboa, Rocky Balboa

“We are who we choose to be.” — Hogarth Hughes, The Iron Giant

“You have to do everything you can. You have to work your hardest. And if you do, if you stay positive, you have a shot at a silver lining.” — Silver Linings Playbook, Silver Linings Playbook

“I’ve decided to make myself the hero of my own story.” — The Holiday

“The world is full of lonely people afraid to make the first move.” — Mahershala Ali, Green Book

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. It’s like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark and thinking there is one more stair than there is.” — The Narrator, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

“Sometimes I think I have felt everything I’m ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I’m not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I’ve already felt.” — Theodore Twombly, Her

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” — Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

“You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours.” — T’Challa, Black Panther

“The hardest choices require the strongest wills.” — Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” — Galadriel, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

“Part of the journey is the end.” — Tony Stark, Avengers: Endgame

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.” — Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

“A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It’s the shit that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.” — Lester Freamon, The Wire (TV, but too powerful to omit)

“Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” — Alfred Pennyworth, Batman Begins

“The enemy is not the Japanese or the Germans. It is the limits of the human heart.” — Empire of the Sun

“I am not a mistake! All my life I have been told I was a mistake. ‘Do not exist. Do not be here.’ But I am. And I am not a mistake.” — Everything Everywhere All At Once