Top 350 Margaret Mitchell Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls.”

— Margaret Mitchell

152. “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.”

— Margaret Mitchell

153. “It’s hard to be strict with a man who loses money so pleasantly.”

— Margaret Mitchell

154. “She smiled – it wasn’t a grin this time – but just a smile that made me feel she could see my soul and I wished to God my soul had been cleaner.”

— Margaret Mitchell

155. “It’s not because I’ve -what is the phrase? -‘swept you off your feet’ by my -er- ardor?”

— Margaret Mitchell

156. “It was one thing to know that Ashley was engaged but it was another to hear people talk about it so casually.”

— Margaret Mitchell

157. “That was a neat way of smoothing a man’s vanity and yet keeping him on the string, and Charles rose to it as though such bait were new and he the first to swallow it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

158. “This is what happens when you look back to happiness, this pain, this heart-break, this discontent.”

— Margaret Mitchell

159. “In the excitement of trying on dresses she had forgotten Mammy’s ironclad rule that, before going to any party, the O’Hara girls must be crammed so full of food at home they would be unable to eat any refreshments at the party.”

— Margaret Mitchell

160. “Mr. Lincoln, the merciful and just, who cries large tears over Mrs. Bixby’s five boys, hasn’t any tears to shed about the thousands of Yankees dying at Andersonville,” said Rhett, his mouth twisting. “He doesn’t care if they all die. The order is out. No exchanges.”

— Margaret Mitchell

161. “When Scarlett was seeing Rhett to the door, she asked indignantly: “If it were you, wouldn’t you enlist with the Yankees to keep from dying in that place and then desert?” “Of course,” said Rhett, his teeth showing beneath his mustache. “Then why didn’t Ashley do it?” “He’s a gentleman,” said Rhett, and Scarlett wondered how it was possible to convey such cynicism and contempt in that one honorable word.”

— Margaret Mitchell

162. “I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face.”

— Margaret Mitchell

163. “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”

— Margaret Mitchell

164. “And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.”

— Margaret Mitchell

165. “The world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business.”

— Margaret Mitchell

166. “Supposed 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.”

— Margaret Mitchell

167. “She saw in his eyes defeat of her wild dreams, her mad desires.”

— Margaret Mitchell

168. “Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it’s be brave or else be killed.”

— Margaret Mitchell

169. “God help the man who ever really loves you.”

— Margaret Mitchell

170. “She couldn’t survey the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern.”

— Margaret Mitchell

171. “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

172. “I don’t see how it could possibly be made into a movie unless the entire book was scrapped and Shirley Temple cast as ‘Bonnie,’ Mae West as ‘Belle,’ and Stepin Fetchit as ‘Uncle Peter.’”

— Margaret Mitchell

173. “In a weak moment, I have written a book.”

— Margaret Mitchell

174. “She could not ignore life. She had to live it and it was too brutal, too hostile, for her even to try to gloss over its harshness with a smile.”

— Margaret Mitchell

175. “The south produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors and lawyers and poets, but certainly no engineers and mechanics. Let Yankees adopt such low callings.”

— Margaret Mitchell

176. “Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further.”

— Margaret Mitchell

177. “Most of the misery of the world has been caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were all about.”

— Margaret Mitchell

178. “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

179. “I’m tempting you with fine gifts until your girlish ideals are quite worn away and you are at my mercy.”

— Margaret Mitchell

180. “That’s what’s wrong with you. All your beaux have respected you too much, though God knows why, or they have been too afraid of you to really do right by you. The result is that you are unendurably uppity. You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.”

— Margaret Mitchell

181. “I’m riding you with a slack rein, my pet, but don’t forget that I’m riding with curb and spurs just the same.”

— Margaret Mitchell

182. “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

183. “Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so courteously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk about Europe and books and music and poetry and things that interested her not at all – and yet so desirable?”

— Margaret Mitchell

184. “I love you, Scarlett, because we are so much alike, renegades, both of us, dear, and selfish rascals. Neither of us cares a rap if the whole world goes to pot, so long as we are safe and comfortable.”

— Margaret Mitchell

185. “Everywhere, women gathered in knots, huddled in groups on front porches, on sidewalks, even in the middle of the streets, telling each other that no news is good news, trying to comfort each other, trying to present a brave appearance.”

— Margaret Mitchell

186. “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.”

— Margaret Mitchell

187. “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.”

— Margaret Mitchell

188. “Times were so hard it was difficult to feed and lodge humans, much less animals.”

— Margaret Mitchell

189. “In the nine years before Scarlett was born, the town had been called, first, Terminus and then Marthasville, and not until the year of Scarlett’s birth had it become Atlanta. When Gerald first moved to north Georgia, there had been no Atlanta at all, not even the semblance of a village, and wilderness rolled over the site.”

— Margaret Mitchell

190. “It’s always annoying to the godly when the ungodly flourish like the green bay tree.”

— Margaret Mitchell

191. “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

192. “It was hard to believe there was so much money in all this bitter and poverty-stricken world. So much money, so very much money, and someone else had it, someone who took it lightly and didn’t need it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

193. “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

194. “Gradually, Scarlett drew courage from the brave faces of her friends and from the merciful adjustment which nature makes when what cannot be cured must be endured.”

— Margaret Mitchell

195. “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

196. “Let’s don’t be too hot headed and let’s don’t have any war. Most of the misery of the world has been caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were all about.”

— Margaret Mitchell

197. “Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many babies? But no, God didn’t make them. Stupid people made them.”

— Margaret Mitchell

198. “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

199. “He made her play and she had almost forgotten how. Life had been so serious and so bitter. He knew how to play and swept her along with him.”

— Margaret Mitchell

200. “What is there to see in Europe? I’ll bet those foreigners can’t show us a thing we haven’t got right here in Georgia.”

— Margaret Mitchell