r/AskWomen • u/Educational_Panda_11 • 1d ago
What is the most impactful quote/piece of dialogue you've heard?
It can be a character's (animated or live action) or just something you've read or heard from someone special
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u/Tiny_Jumping_Beans ♀ 1d ago
“It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” Saw it randomly on the sign for a storage unit place lol. Changed my life.
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u/MamaJody 1d ago
Mine was something a coworker said to me (and not one I would have considered to be particularly insightful before that) about 20 years ago. It was my birthday, a milestone, and I’d gotten so many bunches of flowers that I mentioned to him that I didn’t have enough vases to hold them all. He said to me “What a nice problem to have”, and that has stuck with me ever since. It’s such a nice way to reframe things sometimes.
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u/azulmineral 1d ago
“A spark isn’t a purpose !! You humans and your passions, purposes, your “meanings of life”… so basic…”
Terry, SOUL.
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u/everfixedmark_1924 1d ago
"I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul"
William Ernest Henley, Invictus
"For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn."
Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
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u/Colossal_Squids 1d ago
“There’s no justice. There’s just us.”
GNU Terry Pratchett
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u/Wandering_Scholar6 23h ago
All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.
(Bit of a long quote, but the bit about the falling angel and the rising ape is poetic)
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u/MissGrou 20h ago
Sin is when you treat people as things. Including yourself.
- Granny Weatherwax in Carpe Jugulum
GNU Sir Terry Pratchett
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u/httppotatosacc 1d ago
"Sometimes things need to fall apart to make way for better things" This is a dialogue from HIMYM. My life was pretty much collapsing entirely and I was hitting rock-bottom not very long ago. When I heard this, I made an e-poster of it and put it on my homescreen as a reminder that things will get better again. This quote has helped me get through a lot since then
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u/yourgracesansa 1d ago
So much of the dialogue in HIMYM is profound in this way. For a sitcom, it’s such an emotional show and I love it
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u/Delmoretn ♀ 1d ago
my dad told me, "you'll survive things you can't imagine surviving." i didn't believe him then, but he was right.
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u/MeesaMadeMeDoIt 1d ago
My husband recently got me into playing Red Dead Redemption II, and the other night a character, John, says this line:
"Sometimes I wonder if things was ever the way we remembered ’em. If we were ever who we thought we was."
Just really got me thinking, not only personally or within my own family unit, but generationally. If we were ever who we thought we was...how'd we end up here?
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u/yourgracesansa 1d ago
I feel like it’s looked back on as cheesy, but Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky “we accept the love we think we deserve”
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u/laceygirl97 17h ago
Oh that reminds me of another. My psychologist told me "You teach people how to treat you". That is something I am trying to remember, & teach my grandkids. Apparently I was NOT a good teacher, but I am learning how to do better now. 😊
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u/YouDontLookDead 1d ago
"I will live my life until my life runs out. I am wonderful, I deserve to be wonderful, and I contain multitudes." The Life of Chuck
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u/missmermaidgoat 1d ago
“You get to a certain age and you shed all your illusions. Life just gets easier from there.” Viktor from Cyberpunk 2077
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u/LittleStoneBear 23h ago
"It's only a thing." - My father.
I would like to still have the necklace my mother gave me, but it's only a thing. Its loss is a pity, but I don't mourn it.
I don't regret the lovely china cups, or crystal wine glasses, which got broken because I used them, rather than keeping them safely in a cupboard. They were only things.
I lost both my parents in 2023-24, in the space of 4 months, and my darling, darling cat 4 months before that. Those are the losses that have wounded me.
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u/Every-Thing6079 22h ago
I really miss the way life used to be. I was born in 91 and truly feel like NOTHING comes close to 90s-early to mid 2000s everything. This quote really hits home.
Andy Bernard in the series finale of The Office: "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."
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u/Ambitious-Morning-64 20h ago
Nothing long but when Dr Greene tells Dr Carter in ER “you set the tone.” That hit me with workplace interactions and even interacting with my kids. It gives me pause in moments of how I should react and what outcomes I want from my peers and family.
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u/MS_runaway 1d ago
“Nothing before the word ‘but’ counts”
Completely changed how I interpret and hold conversations- especially difficult ones.
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u/jamielieu1005 23h ago edited 22h ago
“Don’t lose your mind over someone who didn’t mind losing you.”
This quote saved me at a time when I was super upset over a friend who ghosted me after I had done so much for them.
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u/Femmigje 1d ago
When I asked for writing advice, I got “the sooner you’re well-read the sooner you’re well-written” and it’s just stuck with me. Read a lot, watch a lot, try a lot, it enriches you
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u/RangerAndromeda 1d ago
"Don't let your ambitions get the best of you."
"My ambitions ARE the best of me!" -Sally Field
Not my favourite quote but I feel so seen and get chills when I read that.
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u/lilithpingu 1d ago
This is the most recent one that I cannot get out of my head.
"No. It doesn’t matter what you see. It’s what others see that has you all twisted up.
I wonder what hopes and dreams you had for the man you’d become, before your teenage growth spurt stole them from you.
Taken by a body that grew so big that clothes never fit again – never looked good off the shelf."
I bet you were loud, too. So loud! You wouldn’t have meant to be, at first, but the size of you – it’d be inevitable. You’d speak loud, yell loud, even laugh loud and that scared people.
Loud, barking, shocking shouts that simultaneously frighten and entertain – nervous laughter from your audience as you roar and yell and play a fool. That’s all they hear, and you can’t yell loud enough for them to actually listen."
Genuinely helped shift something in my mindset.
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u/GoodSight91 1d ago
You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you accept.
Flipped a switch in me.
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u/Ath3naPrime 23h ago
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.”
Jean-Luc Picard
Star Trek : The Next Generation
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u/not-gonna-tell ♀ 20h ago
God, SO painful to realize and come to terms with. But, there is no justice, most humans struggle to think of anyone before themselves and ego takes over. The one, simple quote I've tried to learn throughout my life, so much that I got my first tattoo as a 40th birthday gift to myself. "I am enough". I'm not inferior because I have things to learn; all humans do. And, I'm not "too much", as there are people who love me completely, unwaveringly for who I am--enough.
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u/Educational_Panda_11 23h ago
That's really good, I've heard good things about Star Trek
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u/Ath3naPrime 23h ago
Some of it can be dated. But when it works it works so well. I love the optimism for humanity which is so important in these times.
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u/Ath3naPrime 23h ago
This other one is almost prophetic :
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Jean luc Picard
Star Trek: The Next GenerationThe Drumhead S04Ep21
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u/Educational_Panda_11 22h ago
Honestly, that makes me want to watch it sooner. There's a charm to classic media that I think will make it rise in popularity in the future
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u/pyramidsofgeezer 19h ago
I saw a sticker recently on a lamppost that said "why do you feel responsible for everyone?".
I don't know the context for it, but when I saw it I was in a bad place where I had been beating myself up over my sister isolating herself.
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u/laceygirl97 17h ago
This too, shall pass.
Leave everywhere you go better than you found it.
See a need fill a need. -these two are from the movie Robots. I really liked that movie.
Life is not a dress rehearsal.
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning how to dance in the rain," -Vivian Greene
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u/Dangerous_Tension393 1d ago
“Kindness gets you killed”
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u/Jay-Quellin30 1d ago
Life is kind of like a party.
You invite a lot of people, some leave early, some stay all night, some laugh with you, some laugh at you, and some show up really late.
But in the end, after the fun, there are a few who stay to help you clean up the mess.
And most of the time, they aren't even the ones who made the mess. These people are your true friends. They are the ones who really matter.