Margaret Mitchell Quotes

“Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”

“I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”

“Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.”

“In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out.”

“Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.”

“Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.”

“You're so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.”

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again…. Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love…”

“God help the man who ever really loves you.”

“If I said I was madly in love with you you'd know I was lying.”

“The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more - and by remembering too much.”

“How wonderful to know someone who was bad and dishonorable and a cheat and a liar, when all the world was filled with people who would not lie to save their souls and who would rather starve than do a dishonorable deed!”

“Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.”

“Yes, I want money more than anything else in the world.”

“Then you’ve made the only choice. But there’s a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It’s loneliness.”

“She couldn't survey the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern.”

“After all, tomorrow is another day!”

“My dear, I don't give a damn.”

“Well, my dear, take heart. Some day, I will kiss you and you will like it. But not now, so I beg you not to be too impatient.”

“I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.”

“Sir,"she said,"you are no gentleman!"

An apt observation,"he answered airily."And, you, Miss, are no lady.”

“Hardships make or break people.”

“It was better to know the worst than to wonder.”

“Dear Scarlett! You aren't helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God help the Yankees if they should get you." -Rhett Butler”

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”

“I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.”

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is.”

“And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.”

“Never pass up new experiences [Scarlett], They enrich the mind." - Rhett Butler”

“That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!”

“I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost.”

“Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.”

“I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can't… My dear, I don't give a damn.”

“Great balls of fire. Don't bother me anymore, and don't call me sugar.”

“Now she had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost him.”

“The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts"….. Gerald O'Hara, Gone With The Wind.”

“It was not often that she was alone like this and she did not like it. When she was alone she had to think and, these days, thoughts were not so pleasant.”

“Longing hearts could only stand so much longing.”

“Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That’s the beginning of wisdom.”

“I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face.”

“I only know that I love you.
That's your misfortune.”

“The liar was the hottest to defend his veracity, the coward his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness, and the cad his honor”

“How closely women clutch the very chains that bind them!”

“Her lips on his could tell him better than all her stumbling words.”

“If he's forgotten me, I'll make him remember me. I'll make him want me again.”

“Men and women, they were beautiful and wild, all a little violent under their pleasant ways and only a little tamed.”

“Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many babies? But no, God didn't make them. Stupid people made them.”

“My pet, the world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business" - Rhett Butler”

“Supposed I don't want to redeem myself? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.”

“In a weak moment, I have written a book.”

“She saw in his eyes defeat of her wild dreams, her mad desires.”

“Hush," he said. "I am asking you to marry me. Would you be convinced if I knelt down?”

“She hasn't your strength. She's never had any strength. She's never had anything but heart.”

“Her burdens were her own and burdens were for shoulders strong enough to bear them.”

“Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further.”

“You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he's going to jail. - Rhett Butler”

“She could not ignore life. She had to live it and it was too brutal, too hostile, for her even to try to gloss over its harshness with a smile.”

“There’ll always be wars because men love wars. Women don’t, but men do..”

“As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.”

“The way to get a man interested and to hold his interest was to talk about himself, and then gradually lead the conversation around yourself—and keep it there.”

“Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.”

“All she wanted was a breathing space in which to hurt.”

“I'm tempting you with fine gifts until your girlish ideals are quite worn away and you are at my mercy.”

“I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.”

“I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.”

“They were always like two people talking to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews.”

“He made her play and she had almost forgotten how. Life had been so serious and so bitter. He knew how to play and swept her along with him.”