Margaret Mitchell Quotes

Take my handkerchief, Scarlett. Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known you to have a handkerchief.

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

I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.

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

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.

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

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

Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love.

If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.

Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was.

I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.

Every problem has two handles. You can grab it by the handle of fear or the handle of hope.

But Rhett, you mustn't bring me anything else so expensive. It's awfully kind of you, but I really couldn't accept anything else." "Indeed? Well, I shall bring you presents so long as it pleases me and so long as I see things that will enhance your charms. I shall bring you dark-green watered silk for a frock to match the bonnet. And I warn you that I am not kind. I am tempting you with bonnets and bangles and leading you into a pit. Always remember I never do anything without reason and I never give anything without expecting something in return. I always get paid.

The usual masculine dissillusionment is discovering that a woman has a brain

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.

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

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

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

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

Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.

All wars are sacred to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?

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

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.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

He had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of Scarlett O'Hara going forth to conquer the world in her mother's velvet curtains and the tail feathers of a rooster.

In a weak moment, I have written a book.

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for 'Tis the only thing in this world that lasts, 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for - worth dying for.

Hardships make or break people.

I can't make you understand because you don't know the meaning of fear. You have the heart of a lion and an utter lack of imagination and I envy you both of those qualities. You'll never mind facing realities and you'll never want to escape from them as I do.

I want to make you faint. I will make you faint. You've had this coming to you for years. None of the fools you've known have kissed you like this - have they? Your precious Charles or Frank or your stupid Ashley... I said your stupid Ashley. Gentlemen all - what do they know about women? What do they know about you? I know you.

I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn't something left in life of charm and grace.

I've found out that money is the most important thing in the world and, as God is my witness, I don't ever intend to be without it again. I'll never be hungry again.

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.

It was this feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land where men were contented, uncontradicted ans safe in possession of unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very pleasant place for women to live. So, from the cradle to the grave, women strove to make men pleased with themselves, and the satisfied men repaid lavishly with gallantry and adoration. In fact, men willingly gave ladies everything in the world except credit for having intelligence.

The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her ... her eyes were her own.

It's a curse - this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.

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.

I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything else except look back.

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

There'll always be wars because men love wars. Women don't, but men do.

The Irish are the damnedest race. They put so much emphasis on so many wrong things.

If I said I was madly in love with you, I'd be lying and what's more, you'd know it.

You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.

If! If! If! There were so many ifs in life, never any sense of security, always the dread of losing everything.

The South produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors, lawyers and poets, but certainly not engineers or mechanics. Let the Yankees adopt such low callings.

you can go to the Devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.' 'My pet, I've been to the Devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, not even for you.

What’s broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live…I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over.

The world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business.

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.