Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

You're Ma's own blood son, but did she take on that time Tony Fontaine shot you in the leg? No, she just sent for old Doc Fontaine to dress it and asked the doctor what ailed Tony's aim. Said she guessed the licker was spoiling his marksmanship.

She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate

Oh - a diamond ring - and Rhett, do buy a great big one!

You think that by saying, 'I'm sorry,' all the errors and hurts of years past can be remedied, obliterated from the mind, all the poison drawn from old wounds….

She was less frightened also because life had taken on the quality of a dream, a dream too terrible to be real. It wasn't possible that she, Scarlett O'Hara, should be in such a predicament, with the danger of death about her every hour, every minute. It wasn't possible that the quiet tenor of life could have changed so completely in so short a time.

All you have done is to be different from other women and you have made a little success of it. This is unforgivable sin in any society. The mere fact that you have succeed to run the mill is an insult to everyman who hasn't succeed.

I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. 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.

She felt puzzled and ashamed, as always when people attributed to her emotions and motives they possessed and thought she shared.

A minor point at such a moment.

The very mystery of him excited her curiosity like a door that had neither lock nor key.

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.

It was unreal, grotesquely unreal, that morning skies which dawned so tenderly blue could be profaned with cannon smoke that hung over the town like low thunder clouds, that warm noontides filled with the piercing sweetness of massed honeysuckle and climbing roses could be so fearful, as shells screamed into the streets, bursting like the crack of doom, throwing iron splinters hundreds of yards, blowing people and animals to bits.

Mistress! What would I get out of that except a passel of brats? -Scarlett O'Hara

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

her heart swelled up with misery, until it felt too large for her bosom. It beat with odd little jerks; her hands were cold, and a feeling of disaster oppressed her. There were pain and bewilderment in her face, the bewilderment of a pampered chhild who has always had her own way for the asking and who now, for the first time, was in contact with the unplesantness of life.

This isn't the first time the world's been upside down and it won't be the last. It's happened before and it'll happen again. And when it does happen, everyone loses everything and everyone is equal. And then they all start again at taw, with nothing at all. That is, nothing except the cunning of their brains and strength of their hands.

If! If! If There were so many ifs in life, never any certainty of anything, never any security...

You know I don't read novels,' she said and, trying to equal his jesting mood, went on: 'Besides, you one said it was the height of bad form for husbands and wives to love each other.' 'I once said too God damn many things,' he retorted abruptly and rose to his feet.

I've got something that most pretty ladies haven't got—and that's a mind that's made up.

What did they know about you? I know you.

Then he had thought it all beyond her mental grasp and it had been pleasant to explain things to her. 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.

It's only hypocrites like you, my dear lady, just as black at heart but trying to hide it, who become enraged when called by their right names.

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.

Money can't buy everything." "Someone must have told you that. You'd never think of such a platitude all by yourself. What can't it buy?" "Oh, well, I don't know—not happiness or love, anyway." "Generally it can. And when it can't, it can buy some of the most remarkable substitutes.