Dubbed as a diabolical puppet master by Barney and a psychopath by Ted, Lily Aldrin can be a very capable manipulator when she wants to. Luckily, her heart is always in the right place. The truth is, Lily is a pretty amazing friend. She's supportive, caring, and she's always got some words of wisdom to help her friends get through a rough time.
Over the course of nine seasons, Lily has given tons of life lectures to her friends (most often Ted), but those life lectures have taught us a thing or two as well. So, today, we're here to share with you ten Lily Aldrin quotes that are still as relatable as they ever were.
"DEFINITIONS ARE IMPORTANT."
In the first episode of Season Five, the group finds out that Barney and Robin have been sleeping together over the summer without ever defining their relationship. Lily finds this unacceptable and keeps pushing them to have “the talk,” but Barney and Robin don't want to do it. However, as Lily put it herself, definitions are important, so she decides to lock them up in a room until they define the relationship.
Barney and Robin pass a few notes under the door, but the definitions don’t satisfy Lily, prompting Marshall to hilariously snap the whip across the door and yell out “not good enough!” While Lily’s methods may be a bit extreme, she does have a point: definitions are important. Even Barney and Robin had to admit that.
“I DON’T NEED OBJECTIVITY. YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND, I JUST NEED YOUR SUPPORT.”
Aside from giving awesome advice on romantic relationships and career matters, Lily was also wise when it came to friendship. Lily is the friend everyone goes to when they need advice, someone to talk to and share secrets, or just someone to have their back. She really is the kind of friend anyone would be lucky to have. In Season Nine, when she and Marshall were arguing about whether to move to Italy for her job or stay in New York for his job, Robin seemed to be taking Marshall’s side. In response, Lily pretty much defined friendship with this quote.
The truth is, Robin just didn’t want to lose her best friend, which is understandable, but even so, she should have supported Lily no matter how hard it is.
“HOW MUCH IS IT, ON A SCALE FROM ‘NEVER’ TO ‘NEVER EVER’?”
When Lily, Robin, and Victoria (Ted's girlfriend at the time) went shopping for a wedding dress, Lily found the perfect dress, but there was a slight problem. The dress was way too expensive and she knew it. To find out just how much looking this pretty would cost her, Lily asked Robin "how much is it, on a scale from ‘never’ to ‘never ever’?"
Much to Lily’s disappointment, Robin’s answer was "never ever, ever, ever, ever, times infinity" (#relatable). Although, Lily does end up buying the dress, but only after ruining it by sitting in cake and then ripping it.
"WHERE'S THE POOP?"
“Where’s the poop” is the phrase Lily uses when she knows someone is lying or trying to hide something from her, to get them to fess up. The phrase made its debut in the third episode of Season Six, when Lily caught Robin trying to hide the fact that she's having trouble getting over her breakup with Don. Lily explained that she used to have a dog named Bean and whenever he made the face Robin was making, she knew he had pooped in the house.
When Lily kept asking “where’s the poop, Robin?” whenever Robin did something stupid, Robin called Lily a “poop-sniffing dog.” So, next time you catch someone lying to your face, ask them this Lily-approved question. Works every time.
“YOU CAN'T DESIGN YOUR LIFE LIKE A BUILDING. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY. YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE IT… AND IT'LL DESIGN ITSELF.”
Sometimes, we focus too much on the way things ought to be or the way we think they should be, and we forget to pay attention to what’s happening right in front of us and all the clues that life might be throwing at us. Ted tried so hard to hold on to this plan he had of becoming an architect that pursuing it almost destroyed him. Luckily, his wise and honest friend Lily told him the hard truth with this quote.
Now, if only the writers had let the show take its natural course and design itself, instead of forcing an ending that has been set in stone way back in Season One… but, that’s another story for another time.
“YES, I'M IN A ROTTEN MOOD. NO, I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. YES, THIS HAS BOOZE IN IT. NO, IT'S NOT MY FIRST.”
When Marshall doesn’t make his flight and tells Lily he and Marvin might not make it to the Barney and Robin's wedding, she pays the bartender Linus to put drinks in her hand whenever she’s not holding a glass, which becomes a running gag. In "The Lighthouse," Lily gets more bad news when Marshall admits he got a job as a judge in New York, meaning they won't be moving to Italy as planned. Later, when she sits down to have brunch with the gang, Lily promptly makes her mood known:
"Yes, I’m in a rotten mood. No, I don’t want to talk about it. Yes, this has booze in it. No, it’s not my first." We're with you, Lily. Sometimes, you just need some time to process things on your own however you see fit, without any outside interference.
"IT'S JUST... EVENTUALLY WE'RE ALL GONNA MOVE ON. IT'S CALLED GROWING UP."
Barney freaking out about things changing and everyone moving on is a common occurrence. His aversion to change is well-documented over the course of How I Met Your Mother’s nine-season run. In the fifth season episode “Robots vs. Wrestlers,” Barney had yet another crisis when he got tickets for Robots vs. Wrestlers but Robin refused to go, preferring to stay at home with her new boyfriend.
When Ted decides to depart the group for the evening as well, Barney freaks out once again and Lily tries to put him at ease, with some wise words about moving on and growing up.
"WHY NOT JUST SAY GOODBYE TO THE BAD THINGS?"
In Season Nine, Ted decides to leave New York and move to Chicago right after Barney and Robin’s wedding, only telling Lily about it. At the Farhampton, Lily gets her hands on Ted’s list of "things to say goodbye to," which includes stuff like one last Scotch with Barney, saying goodbye to the Empire State Building, and so on. True to form, Lily gives Ted an important life lecture:
"You wrote down all of these things to say goodbye to, but so many of them are good things. Why not just say goodbye to the bad things? Say goodbye to all the times you felt lost, to all the times it was a ‘No' instead of a ‘Yes’, to all the scrapes and bruises, to all the heartache." It turns out “one last life lecture from Lily” was also on the list, but Lily makes it clear this will not be the last one. Nor should it be. Lily’s life lectures are priceless.
“THE BIGGER MISTAKE WOULD BE NOT TO MAKE THE MISTAKE, BECAUSE THEN YOU'D GO YOUR WHOLE LIFE NOT REALLY KNOWING IF SOMETHING IS A MISTAKE OR NOT.”
Towards the end of Season one, Lily started freaking out about her upcoming nuptials with Marshall. So, unbeknownst to Marshall, she applied for an art fellowship in San Francisco that could potentially foil their wedding plans. On her way to the interview, she experienced car trouble and had to ask Ted for help. She expressed her fears and gave a very insightful speech about mistakes.
"Okay, yes, it's a mistake. I know it's a mistake, but there are certain things in life where you know it's a mistake but you don't really know it's a mistake, because the only way to really know it's a mistake is to make the mistake and look back and say 'yep, that was a mistake.' So, really, the bigger mistake would be to not make the mistake, because then you'd go your whole life not really knowing if something is a mistake or not." Even though she said the word 'mistake' way too many times and rambled on like crazy, it’s easy to see her point. We've all been there.
"YOU CAN'T JUST SKIP AHEAD TO WHERE YOU THINK YOUR LIFE SHOULD BE."
Ted Mosby has done some pretty stupid and crazy things in his pursuit of 'the one.' In Season Five, he kind of lost it when his mother lapped him by marrying for the second time, while he hadn’t yet found his Mrs. Mosby. In order to catch up with her and advance his plans for the future, Ted buys a run-down house, much to everyone’s surprise and disapproval.
In an effort to talk some sense into her troubled friend, Lily offers some words of wisdom that we all should take into consideration, “you can’t just skip ahead to where you think your life should be. It doesn’t work that way.”