Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

My dear girl, the Yankees aren't fiends. They haven't horns and hoofs, as you seem to think. They are pretty much like Southeners - except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents. [Rhett Butler]

Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father's plantation

You talk like a Baptist preacher making a recruiting speech. Suppose 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.

She thought without surprise, looking down from her height, that her shoulders were strong enough to bear anything now, having borne the worst that could ever happen to her. She could not desert Tara; she belonged to the red acres far more than they could ever belong to her. Her roots went deep into the blood-colored soil and sucked up life, as did the cotton.

desolate with the knowledge that she could not face life without the terrible strength of the weak, the gentle, the tender hearted.

I think we agreed on the occasion of our first meeting that you were no lady at all.

Peace had failed her and Ashley had failed her, both in the same day, and it was as if the last crevice in the shell had been sealed, the final layer hardened. She had

He doesn't want your mind, the fool, and I don't want your body. I can buy women cheap. But I do want your mind and your heart, and I'll never have them, any more than you'll ever have Ashley's mind. And that's why I'm sorry for you.

It hurts so terribly to cry, but not so much as not being able to cry.

we, dear wife of my bosom, could have been perfectly happy if you had ever given us half a chance, for we are so much alike.

After all, they were Yankees and no one expected anything better from Yankees. So their unthinking insults to her state, her people and their morals, glanced off and never struck deep enough to cause her more than a well-concealed sneer until an incident occurred which made her sick with rage and showed her, if she needed any showing, how wide was the gap between North and South and how utterly impossible it was to bridge it.

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

I keep life filled and speeded up so that I can cheat myself into believing that I am happy and contented, but oh! When night comes and I go to bed and turn out the lights, I lie there in the dark, I realize the absolute futility of trying to kid myself.

Believing was a sacred duty. And those who were so traitorous as not to believe should, at least, have the decency to keep their mouths shut.

My dear, I don't give a damn.

Starving's not pleasant...I know for I've starved, but I'm not afraid of that. I am afraid of facing life without the slow beauty of our old world that is gone.

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.

Oh, Ashley, nothing has turned out as we expected! It never does, he said. 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.

Si hay algo en el mundo que me divierta de veras es el espectáculo de sus luchas mentales cuando una cuestión de principio está en pugna con una cuestión práctica, como es el dinero. Naturalmente, en usted el lado práctico siempre vence, pero yo continúo a su alrededor para ver si el lado mejor de su naturaleza logra triunfar algún día. Y, cuando llegue ese día, haré la maleta y me marcharé

Before marriage, young girls must be, above all other things, sweet, gentle, beautiful and ornamental, but, after marriage, they were expected to manage households that numbered a hundred people or more, white and black, and they were trained with that in view.

She knew that from childhood playmates grew beaux in later years, and the first duty of a girl was to get married. She told herself that the child was merely full of life and there was still time in which to teach her the arts and graces of being attractive to men.

Strong people don't like witnesses to their weakness.

She could stand anything. Tara was worth it all. For a brief moment, it was mid-summer and the afternoon skies were blue and she lay drowsily in the thick clover of Tara's lawn, looking up at the billowing cloud castles, the fragrance of white blossoms in her nose and the pleasant humming of bees in her ears. Afternoon and hush and the far-off sounds of the wagons coming in from the spiraling red fields. Worth it all, worth more.

I stood there in the doorway before you saw me and I watched you,' he said.'And I watched the other girls. And they all looked as though their faces came out of one mold. Yours didn't.