20 Things You Somehow Missed In The Big Lebowski
13. The Dude's Biblical Lingo
The Dude's iconic catchphrase "The Dude abides" is not a wholly original line — The Coen brothers pulled it from scripture.
Ecclesiastes 1:4 states, "One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but the Earth abides forever." In this context, it seems that the Dude, much like the Earth, remains the same regardless of what's going on around him.
It's kind of like an extension of his tendency to repeat the words and phrases of the people who drift in and out of his life. There's no doubt the Dude heard this verse from Ecclesiastes at some point in his life and decided right then and there that it suited him quite nicely.