The DCEU found its first billion-dollar box office success with the first solo movie of the famous hero Aquaman and its popularity was predicated on many things, one of them being the quotable dialogue.
The best quotes from Aquaman (2018) come from villains and heroes alike, with some lines being side-splittingly funny and others being surprisingly thought-provoking for such a large-scale action movie. Either way, each quote is highly memorable for its own set of distinct reasons.
"Sometimes, you have to do what's right, even if your heart aches against it." (Princess Mera)
Mera delivers this line as she and Arthur talk on the plane ride to the Deserter Kingdom located in the Sahara desert. She's referring to her decision to save Arthur from his duel with King Orm in the Ring of Fire, thus blowing her cover as one of the people plotting to remove Orm, her fiance, from the throne of Atlantis. The quote itself is an explanation as to why she would agree to marry Orm in the first place, saying that her duty is first and foremost to her family and to her nation.
This is significant for Arthur, who still feels resentful about his mother's decision to return to Atlantis to fulfill her own arranged marriage to Orm's father in order to protect Arthur and his father from harm. It's in this moment that Arthur first begins to realize that his mother's decision wasn't one that she took lightly and that he is not the only one who's suffered because of circumstances that they could not change.
"Something something trident." (Arthur Curry/Aquaman)
Aquaman is also full of funny lines too, with the movie making sure to balance out its more serious moments with MCU-like jokes. This quote comes from Arthur after he and Mera discover how to play the final message from King Atlan in the Deserter Kingdom.
Atlan's message contains cryptic instructions that lead to the location of his missing trident, with Mera destroying the message after they hear it so that the information can't fall into the wrong hands. Arthur protests, but too late to save it, with him saying that they should have written down the instructions. Mera says she memorized it, asking if Arthur did too, prompting Arthur to deliver this hilarious summary of Atlan's message.
"You can take my army, you soft-bellied slug. But you will never have my allegiance!" (The Brine King)
Some of the most interesting characters in Aquaman are the other kings of the fractured Atlantean empire, with the king of the Brine people being a particularly memorable addition. He's the last of the kings that are shown in the movie, leading a final defense against King Orm and his plan to conquer the Brine and gain the requisite number of kingdoms needed under Atlantean law to ascend and attack the surface world.
The Brine King delivers this defiant line straight to Orm after being defeated by him in battle. It perfectly exemplifies the fun that the movie extracts from DC's underwater cultures.
"I'll make you a deal. I won't tell you how to captain... and you don't tell me how to pirate." (Black Manta)
David Kane, who would become the iconic Aquaman villain Black Manta later in the story, gets a fantastic entrance into the movie as he and his team take over a Russian submarine.
He punctuates the line by killing the captain that he says it to, establishing the character's flair for villainy and creating one of the DCEU's best villain quotes so far.
"By bloodshed do the gods make known their will." (King Orm)
Orm is a great villain, comic book or no. There's a certain aplomb to the Atlantean king and his delivery of even the most nefarious lines. Part of Orm's confidence comes from his obvious belief in himself but he does also seem to genuinely buy the traditional Atlantean rhetoric taught to him by his father.
While firing up the crowd before his duel with Arthur, Orm delivers this great quote in his booming voice to big cheers from his audience. It's a standout line that Arthur repeats back to him during their second fight for the throne at the end of the movie, signifying Arthur's own confidence and growth into someone ready to take on the responsibilities of being king.
"You killed innocent people. You ask the sea for mercy." (Arthur Curry/Aquaman)
Quotes like this one show how the DCEU's Aquaman isn't really the typical comic book movie hero. At least, not at the beginning of this story. The father and son pirate team of Jesse and David Kane may not be likable characters but Arthur's decision to leave Jesse Kane trapped under a torpedo in a sinking submarine is something even the hero comes to regret.
Nevertheless, Arthur isn't exactly wrong for going to help the rest of the submarine crew escape, as Jesse Kane did trap himself by firing a grenade at Arthur and missing. Arthur then delivers this memorably cold line to David Kane as he begs for help, sparking the blood feud between the two.
"Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men." (Black Manta)
This line comes as Black Manta makes their real debut in the movie, with David Kane now suited up as the villain with a new motivation to kill Arthur, and he says it after making an explosive entrance. The words themselves, however, are from author H.P. Lovecraft, taken from his famous story The Call of Cthulhu.
While the quote alone is fairly compelling, and an interesting choice for a villain's big moment, it's the sentence that comes before the quote in Lovecraft's original text that has the most interesting thematic connection to the movie: "What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise."
"He still walks to the end of that dock. Every morning. Every day. Waiting for you." (Arthur Curry/Aquaman)
At the heart of Aquaman's plot lies the love story between Arthur's parents, Queen Atlanna and Thomas Curry. It causes the hero to feel conflicted about their heritage and identity, as his claim to the throne of Atlantis stokes the prejudices of the underwater kingdom. Having assumed for years that Queen Atlanna had died when she was sacrificed to the creatures of the Trench, he's obviously very emotional when he discovers that she survived and has been trapped living in the Hidden Sea.
Queen Atlanna asks Arthur about his father, clearly anxious about whether Thomas is even still alive, and Arthur responds with this memorable quote. Thomas Curry's love for Atlanna is undying, with him following Atlanna's final instructions to him and waiting for her at the end of the dock by his lighthouse every day in the hope that she will be safe enough to return.
"Okay, so we're doing things a little out of order. S*** happens." (Arthur Curry/Aquaman)
This line comes as the movie's action really begins to ramp up, with Arthur and Mera having just escaped the duel at the Ring of Fire. The two then have to race to get out of Atlantis before Orm and the pursuing soldiers can shoot their ship down.
With Mera berating Arthur for having entered into the duel in the first place, upsetting the plan to find Atlan's Excalibur-like trident before making a bid for the throne, Arthur responds with this characteristically blasé response. There's an added level of meta-humor to the joke, as there's a generally "out of order" approach to the whole story in Aquaman, with the timeline jumping throughout different points in Arthur's life and even the history of Atlantis in order to tell its epic tale.
"Put two ships in the open sea without wind or tide, they will come together." (Arthur Curry/Aquaman)
The best quote in Aquaman comes, as Arthur freely admits when he introduces it, from author Jules Verne. It's actually the first line of the movie and Arthur uses it to establish the all-important relationship between his parents.
Though Arthur's narration may seem mournful at the beginning of the movie, as the start of the romance between his parents has its tragic elements, his voice returns to bookend the story and confirms the triumphant nature of Thomas' and Atlanna's love.