33 movie quotes that inspire us to live our best lives

If you find yourself needing a pick-me-up when life gets a bit rough, here are 33 of our favourite quotes from some of the biggest hit movies to motivate and inspire you to keep on trucking. Even when it’s all starting to feel a bit pointless, sometimes you just need a bit of encouragement to turn your day around.

1. Rocky Balboa in Rocky Balboa

“Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.”

2. Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas

“Sometimes the right path is not the easiest one.”

3. Yoda in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

4. Gusteau in Ratatouille

“If you focus on what you left behind, you will never be able to see what lies ahead.”

5. Walter Mitty in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

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

6. Rick Dicker in Incredibles 2

“You want to get out of the hole? First you’re going to have to put down the shovel.”

7. Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting

“You’ll have bad times, but it’ll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren’t paying attention to.”

8. Maximus in Gladiator

“Nothing happens to anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear.”

9. Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

10. Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“It is not our abilities that show what we truly are … it is our choices.”

11. John Keating in Dead Poets Society

“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”

12. August Walker in Mission Impossible: Fallout

“Hope is not a strategy.”

13. Neil Armstrong in First Man

“When you get a different vantage point, it changes your perspective ... It allows us to see things that maybe we should have seen a long time ago.”

14. Mary Poppins in Mary Poppins Returns

“Everything is possible, even the impossible.”

15. Jeff Struecker in Black Hawk Down

“It’s what you do right now that makes a difference.”

16. Fa Zhou in Mulan

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.”

17. Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

18. Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

“It’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”

19. Bob Harris in Lost in Translation

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

20. Merida in Brave

“You control your destiny – you don’t need magic to do it. And there are no magical shortcuts to solving your problems.”

21. Christopher Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness

“Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something, not even me. Alright? You dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period.”