Margaret Mitchell Quotations

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.

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

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

The south produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors and lawyers and poets, but certainly no engineers and mechanics. Let Yankees adopt such low callings.

Until you have lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.

There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us.

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

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.

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.

My pet, the world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business

The-18 month period is a compromise between the feeling that two years is a little bit too long for non-contested cases and that one year seems a little bit short to reflect on matters properly.

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.

Until you lose your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

There are proposals where there is little or no evidence available from the executive to support the assertion that the reforms proposed will safeguard the interests of children and support stable families.

I'm tired of saying, "How wonderful you are!" to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it.

I just can't imagine what it's going to be like without him. We've been together a long time.

The history of the versions is a history of doctrine and dispute.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Forgive me for startling you with the impetuosity of my sentiments, my dear Scarlett—I mean, my dear Mrs. Kennedy. It cannot have escaped your notice that for some time past the friendship I have had in my heart for you has ripened into a deeper feeling, a feeling more beautiful, more pure, more sacred. Dare I name it you? Ah! It is love which makes me so bold!

What is there to see in Europe? I'll bet those foreigners can't show us a thing we haven't got right here in Georgia.

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

I bare my soul and you are suspicious! No, Scarlett, this is a bona fide honorable declaration. I admit that it's not in the best of taste, coming at this time, but I have a very good excuse for my lack of breeding. I'm going away tomorrow for a long time and I fear that if I wait till I return you'll have married some one else with a little money. So I thought, why not me and my money? Really, Scarlett, I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.

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

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.

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

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.

It had been so long since she had seen him and she had lived on memories until they were worn thin.

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

It was better to know the worst than to wonder.

Did you ever hear the Oriental proverb, "The dogs bark but the caravan passes on"? Let them bark, Scarlett. I fear nothing will stop your caravan.

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

In a weak moment, I have written a book.

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.

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

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

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

Hardships make or break people.

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything.

Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.

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.

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.

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

Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.

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.

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.

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

You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.

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

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.

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.

Somehow the bright beauty had gone from April afternoon and from her heart as well and the sad sweetness of remembering was as bitter as gall.

His voice stopped and they looked for a long quiet moment into each other's eyes and between them lay the sunny lost youth that they had so unthinkingly shared.

Longing hearts could only stand so much longing.

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

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

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

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

what will the South be like without all our fine boys? What would the South have been if they had lived?

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

These three ladies disliked and distrusted one another as heartily as the First Triumvirate of Rome, and their close alliance was probably for the same reason.

Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so courteously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk about Europe and books and music and poetry and things that interested her not at all - and yet so desirable?

Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

No, my dear, I'm not in love with you, no more than you are with me, and if I were, you would be the last person I'd ever tell. God help the man who ever really loves you. You'd break his heart, my darling, cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn't even trouble to sheathe her claws.

All really nice girls wonder when men don't try to kiss them. They know they shouldn't want them to and they know they must act insulted if they do, but just the same, they wish the men would try.

Scarlett's mind went back through the years to the still hot noon at Tara when grey smoke curled above a blue-clad body and Melanie stood at the top of the stairs with Charles' sabre in her hand. Scarlett remembered that she had thought at the time: 'How silly! Melly couldn't even heft that sword!' But now she knew that had the necessity arisen, Melanie would have charged down those stairs and killed the Yankee - or been killed herself.

Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual masculine indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.

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.

Yes, as Rhett had prophesied, marriage could be a lot of fun. Not only was it fun but she was learning many things. That was odd in itself, because Scarlett had thought life could teach her no more. Now she felt like a child, every day on the brink of a new discovery.

Why will people persist in reading strange meanings into the simplest of story? Is it not enough that a writer can entertain for a few hours with narrative without being suspected of 'significances' or symbolism or 'social trends'?

They knew that love snatched in the face of danger and death was doubly sweet for the strange excitement that went with it.

Crackers are short on sparkle.

Sir" said Mrs. Meade indignantly. "There are NO deserters in the Confederate army." "I beg your pardon," said Rhett with mock humility. "I meant those thousands on furlough who FORGOT to rejoin their regiments and those who have been over their wounds for six months but who remain at home, going about their usual business or doing the spring plowing.

I won't think of it now. I can't stand it now. I'll think of it later.

Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: 'As God is my witness, and God is my witness, the Yankees aren't going to lick me. I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill - as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again.

She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers.

I loved something I made up, something that's just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn't see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes—and not him at all.

I will think about that tomorrow!

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

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.

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

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

I'm riding you with a slack rein, my pet, but don't forget that I'm riding with curb and spurs just the same.