Margaret Mitchell famous quotes

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Strong #Fighting #Wind

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

#Hate #Anger #Unrequited Love

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

#Lost Love #Reputation #Realizing

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

#Life #Positive #Hope

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Courage #Reputation #Enough

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

#Grace #Want #Charm

If I said I was madly in love with you you'd know I was lying.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Lying #Love You #Heartbreaking

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

#Lost #Understood

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Heart #Kissing #Impatient

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

#Two #Problem #Handle

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Love #Positive #Break Up

It was better to know the worst than to wonder.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Knowledge #Wonder #Worst

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Memories #Fall #Ears

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

#Different #Literature #Sin

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Fighting #Land #Dying

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

#Sweet #Goes On #Faces

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

#Land #World

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

#Love You #Brutal

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Inspirational #Life #Giving

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Dog #Bark #Fear Nothing

Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Strong #Enough #Burden

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Thinking #Way #Another Day

I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Crazy #Thinking #Tomorrow

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!
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Beautiful #Mean #Heart

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

#Love #Sexy #Kissing

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

#Business #People #Forgiving

Hardships make or break people.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Being Strong #Perseverance #Adversity

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

#Birthday #Death #Time

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Years #Tree #Way

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

#Writing #Ease

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

#Beautiful #Men #Littles

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Mother #World #Roosters

Madam, you flatter yourself. I do not want to marry you or anyone else. I am not a marrying man. - Rhett Butler
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Men #Want #Butlers

But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then into a screaming tornado,sweeping away her world, whirling her out of her sheltered life,and dropping her down in the midst of this still,haunted desolation.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Clouds #Storm #Four

It is axiomatic among writers that no one ever sues the writer of an unsuccessful book. Just let a book go over twenty-five thousand copies and it is surprising how many people's feelings are hurt, how many screwballs think their brain children have been stolen, and how many people feel that they have been portrayed in a manner calculated to bring infamy upon them.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Hurt #Children #Book

I have a passionate desire for personal privacy. I want to stand before the world, for good or bad, on the book I wrote, not on what I say in letters to friends, not on my husband and my home life, the way I dress, my likes and dislikes, et cetera. My book belongs to anyone who has the price, but nothing of me belongs to the public.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Husband #Book #Home

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

#Crisis #Handkerchiefs #Rhett Butler

She is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality." (Ashley said about Melanie)
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Dream #Reality #Faces

[T]he merciful adjustment which nature makes when what cannot be cured must be endured.
-- Margaret Mitchell

you can go to the Devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.' 'My pet, I've been to the Devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, not even for you.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Pet #Devil #Care

It doesn’t matter who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is a gentleman and a Southerner and prideful. For a woman, love comes after marriage.” “Oh, Pa, that’s such an Old Country notion!” “And a good notion it is! All this American business of running around marrying for love, like servants, like Yankees! The best marriages are when the parents choose for the girl. For how can a silly piece like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel?
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Girl #Running #Country

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Men #Land #Vanity

And if we folks have a motto, it's this: 'Don't holler - smile and bide your time.' We've survived a passel of things that way, smiling and biding our time, and we've gotten to be experts at surviving.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Experts #Way #Motto

I won't need you to rescue meM. I can take care of myself, thank you. - Scarlett O'Hara.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Needs #Care #Need You

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Twilight #Two #Talking

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Stupid #Years #Gentleman

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Real #War #Shadow

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

#Thinking #Think For Yourself

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Thinking #These Days #Pleasant

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Thinking #People #Judging

I'm tired of saying "How wonderful you are!" to fool men, who haven't got one half sense I've got.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Tired #Men #Fool

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Running #Different #Done

You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Kissing #Should

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

#Apology #Impossible #Harder

She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Strong #Fate #Joy

All she wanted was a breathing space in which to hurt.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Hurt #Breathing #Space

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

#Running #Strong #Block

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Civilization #People #Wreckage

There ain't nothing from the outside can lick any of us.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Adventure

The Old Guard dies but it never surrenders.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Past #Surrender #Never Surrender

Everybody's mainspring is different. And I want to say this - folks whose mainsprings are busted are better dead.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Different #Want #Emptiness

Southerners can never resist a losing cause.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Sunset #Causes #Losing

My age is my own private business and I intend to keep it so - if I can. I am not so old that I am ashamed of my age and I am not so young that I couldn't have written my book and that is all the public needs to know about my age.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Book #Age #Needs

. . . She knew only that if she did or said thus-and-so, men would unerringly respond with the complimentary thus-and-so. It was like a mathematical formula and no more difficult, for mathematics was the one subject that had come easy to Scarlett in her schooldays.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Men #Easy #Mathematics

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Tired #Men #Important

The Irish are the damnedest race. They put so much emphasis on so many wrong things.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Race #Emphasis

Brilliance is one part talent, two parts wisdom and three parts passion.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Passion #Two #Three

What’s 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 live…I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Believe #Long #Broken

I loved something I made up
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Made

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#World #Too Much #Remember

But she knew that no matter what beauty lay behind, it must remain there. No one could go forward with a load of aching memories.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Memories #Matter #Behinds

To Scarlett, there was something breath-taking about Ellen O'Hara, a miracle that lived in the house with her and awed her and charmed and soothed her.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#House #Miracle

You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he's going to jail. - Rhett Butler
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Sorry #Jail #Thieves

The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her ... her eyes were her own.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Sweet #Eye #Green

Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Selfish #Determined #Helpless

Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet & dancing slippers had slipped away & there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies & turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Girl #Eye #Hands

All wars are sacred to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?
-- Margaret Mitchell

#War #Fighting #People

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.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Heart #Reality #Imagination

I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Selfish #Silly #Love You

men are so conceited they’ll believe anything that flatters them
-- Margaret Mitchell

#Believe #Conceited #Men

No matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles.
-- Margaret Mitchell

#War #Fighting #Reality