Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

To hear them talk one would have thought they had no legs, natural functions or knowledge of the wicked world.

There's just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in the upbuilding of one.

Well, none of us, as far as I can see, are doing what we intended to do right now, but I think we'll make out just the same. It's a poor person and a poor nation that sits down and cries because life isn't precisely what they expected it to be.

She was going to rush into life and wrest from it what she could.

A new baby! Why, Scarlett, this is a surprise!" he laughed, leaning down to push the blanket away from Ella Lorena's small ugly face. - Rhett Butler

There was no going back and she was going forward.

Talking to Rhett was comparable only to one thing, the feeling of ease and comfort afforded by a pair of old slippers after dancing in a pair too tight.

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.

What gentlemen say and what they think are two different things.

He wasn't a gentleman and there was no telling what men would do when they weren't gentlemen. There was no standard to judge them by.

They were the eyes of a happy woman, a woman around whom storms might blow without ever ruffling the serene core of her being.

It seems we've been at cross purposes, doesn't it? But it's no use now. As long as there was Bonnie, there was a chance that we might be happy. I liked to think that Bonnie was you, a little girl again, before the war, and poverty had done things to you. She was so like you, and I could pet her, and spoil her, as I wanted to spoil you. But when she went, she took everything.

You're a heartless creature but that's part of your charm. Though you've got more charm than the law allows.

A startling thought this, that a woman could handle business matters as well or better than a man, a revolutionary thought to Scarlett who had been reared in the tradition that men were omniscient and women none too bright.

She knew what she wanted and went after it by the shortest route...

People must do what they must do. We all don't think alike or act alike and it's wrong to–to judge others by ourselves.

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.

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything...for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don't you be forgetting it! 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for–worth dying for.

With the spirit of her people those who would not know defeat, even when it stared them in the face, she raised her chin. She could get Rhett back. She knew she could. There had never been a man she couldn't get, once she set her mind upon him. I'll think of it all tomorrow at Tara. I can strand it then. Tomorrow , I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

He was so tender, so infinitely soothing, she longed to stay in his arms forever. With such strong arms about her, surely nothing could harm her.

I wonder if they know they are fighting for a cause that was lost the minute the first shot as fired.

I've felt that I was trying to row a heavily loaded boat in a storm. I've had so much trouble just trying to keep afloat that I couldn't be bothered about things that didn't matter, things I could part with easily and not miss, like good manners and--well, things like that. I've been too afraid my boat would be swamped and so I've dumped overboard the things that seemed least important.

Yankees in Georgia! How did they ever get in?

There was a glow of grim pride in her usually gentle face, approbation and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett's own bosom. 'Why-why-she's like me! She understands how I feel'!