When all else fails!

I confess, I love movies. And every now and then, I come across a movie quote that transcends the times. We all remember movie quotes like that, of course. Casablanca was released in 1943 and is still widely quoted today.

Recently I watched one of my favorite movies, a very hard-hitting sleeper from 2006: Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage. Patterned roughly after the life of infamous Russian arms dealer, Victor Bout, it is the brutal tale of a global arms dealer’s descent into spiritual hell.

The takeaway quote for me was what Yuri Orlov’s (Nicholas Cage’s) wife, Ava Fontaine, tells him after she, a former model, discovers who and what he really is and prepares to leave him:

I feel like all I’ve done my whole life is be pretty. I mean, all I’ve done is be born! I’m a failed actress, a failed artist… I’m not much good as a mother. Come to think of it, I’m not even that pretty anymore. I have failed at everything, Yuri… but I won’t fail as a human being.

When all else fails, not failing as human beings. It’s the last redoubt. I think that this quote offers a wonderful glimmer of sunlight through stormy clouds that tells us what is truly important in life, no matter how bad it gets as we enter this coming electoral season and address the challenges ahead. Ava Fontaine may have provided us with the perfect metaphor for our sad declining Western Civilization. Maybe it even shows us the way forward.

What about you all…do you have favorite movie quotes that you would like to share?