Gone With The Wind Quotes

“Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“It's just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it's time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.”
― Karen Moning, Faefever

“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. ”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Great balls of fire. Don't bother me anymore, and don't call me sugar.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“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.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Longing hearts could only stand so much longing.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“I only know that I love you.
That's your misfortune.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with a singing in her heart that she would never fear them again. No matter what mists might curl around her in the future, she knew her refuge. She started briskly up the street toward home and the blocks seemed very long. Far, far too long. She caught up her skirts to her knees and began to run lightly. But this time she was not running from fear. She was running because Rhett's arms were at the end of the street.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“In the dull twilight of the winter afternoon she came to the end of a long road which had begun the night Atlanta fell. She had set her feet upon that road a spoiled, selfish and untried girl, full of youth, warm of emotion, easily bewildered by life. Now, at the end of the road, there was nothing left of that girl. Hunger and hard labor, fear and constant strain, the terrors of war and the terrors of Reconstruction had taken away all warmth and youth and softness. About the core of her being, a shell of hardness had formed and, little by little, layer by layer, the shell had thickened during the endless months.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...”
― Ben Hecht

“I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day. (Rhett Butler)”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“They knew that love snatched in the face of danger and death was doubly sweet for the strange excitement that went with it.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Take my handkerchief, Scarlett. Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known
you to have a handkerchief.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“Then you've made the only choice. But there's a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It's loneliness.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“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.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Sometimes Frank sighed, thinking he had caught a tropic bird, all flame and jewel color, when a wren would have served him just as well. In fact, much better.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“War and marriage and childbirth had passed over her without touching any deep chord within her and she was unchanged.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“One of the greatest compliments my husband ever said to me was that I had the spirit and strength of a Scarlett O'Hara (from Gone with the Wind). - Strong by Kailin Gow”
― Kailin Gow

“But how nice it would be to know that some good Yankee woman - And there must be SOME good Yankee women. I don’t care what people say, they can’t all be bad! How nice it would be to know that they pulled weeds off our men’s graves and brought flowers to them, even if they were enemies. If Charlie were dead in the North it would comfort me to know that someone - And I don’t care what you ladies think of me,” her voice broke again, “I will withdraw from both clubs and I’ll — I’ll pull up every weed off every Yankee’s grave I can find and I’ll plant flowers, too — and — I just dare anyone to stop me!”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Why, why, her mind stuttered, I believe women could manage everything in the world without men’s help--except having babies, and God knows, no woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Why be an ostrich?”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“They were the eyes of a happy woman, a woman around whom storms might blow without ever ruffling the serene core of her being.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Oh, Scarlett, you are so young you wring my heart.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“He told me and Rafe to stay put in case you came home, burn the note and get hot water and disinfectant and bandages ready—'

'Which would have come in useful, Rafe said, lighting another cigarette, 'if we'd been delivering a baby in Gone with the Wind. What on earth was he picturing? Home surgery on the kitchen table with Abby's embroidery needle?”
― Tana French, The Likeness

“She had seen Southern men, soft voiced and dangerous in the days before the war, reckless and hard in the last despairing days of the fighting. But in the faces of the two men who stared at each other across the candle flame so short a while ago there had been something that was different, something that heartened her but frightened her — fury which could find no words, determination which would stop at nothing.
For the first time, she felt a kinship with the people about her, felt one with them in their fears, their bitterness, their determination. No, it wasn’t to be borne! The South was too beautiful a place to be let go without a struggle, too loved to be trampled by Yankees who hated Southerners enough to enjoy grinding them into the dirt, too dear a homeland to be turned over to ignorant people drunk with whisky and freedom.
As she thought of Tony’s sudden entrance and swift exit, she felt herself akin to him, for she remembered the old story how her father had left Ireland, left hastily and by night, after a murder which was no murder to him or to his family. Gerald’s blood was in her, violent blood. She remembered her hot joy in shooting the marauding Yankee. Violent blood was in them all, perilously close to the surface, lurking just beneath the kindly courteous exteriors. All of them, all the men she knew, even the drowsy-eyed Ashley and fidgety old Frank, were like that underneath — murderous, violent if the need arose. Even Rhett, conscienceless scamp that he was, had killed a man for being “uppity to a lady.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“It was as if the whole world were enveloped in an unmoving blanket of grey smoke. And the whole world was still.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Home was five blocks away. She would not wait for the sobbing Peter to harness the buggy, would not wait for Dr. Meade to drive her home. She could not endure the tears of the one, the silent condemnation of the other. She went swiftly down the dark front steps without her coat or bonnet and into the misty night. She rounded the corner and started up the long hill toward Peachtree Street, walking in a still wet world, and even her footsteps were as noiseless as a dream.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Do you really mean they like it? You wouldn’t fox an old friend, would you?' – in response to Lois Cole’s telegram announcing that Macmillan liked the book that would become known as Gone With the Wind.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“After all, to-morrow is another day.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Personally, we could call her ‘Garbage O’Hara’ for all I care. – in response to editor & friend Lois Cole’s criticism of the name Scarlett O’Hara while Gone with the Wind was in its final stages before publication.”
― Margaret Mitchell