Top 350 Margaret Mitchell Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “There will never again be men like them,” said Carreen softly. “No one can take their places.”

— Margaret Mitchell

302. “She could never love anything or anyone so selflessly as they did. What a lonely feeling it was – and she had never been lonely in either body or spirit before.”

— Margaret Mitchell

303. “And these children will never talk of anything else either. They’ll think it was wonderful and glorious to fight the Yankees and come home blind and crippled – or not come home at all. They all like to remember the war, to talk about it. But I don’t. I don’t even like to think about it. I’d forget it all if I could – oh, if I only could!”

— Margaret Mitchell

304. “Somehow she found that she was sitting on the low velvet chair and Ashley, on the hassock at her feet, was holding both her hands in his, in a hard grip. He was saying things – things that made no sense. Her mind was quite blank, quite empty of all the thoughts that had surged through it only a moment before, and his words made no more impression than rain on glass. They fell on unhearing ears, words that were swift and tender and full of pity, like a father speaking to a hurt child.”

— Margaret Mitchell

305. “I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.”

— Margaret Mitchell

306. “You must not say these things, Scarlett! You mustn’t. You don’t mean them. You’ll hate yourself for saying them, and you’ll hate me for hearing them!”

— Margaret Mitchell

307. “There was a look of consternation in them, of incredulity and something more – what was it? Yes, Gerald had looked that way the day his pet hunter had broken his leg and he had had to shoot him. Why did she have to think of that now? Such a silly thought. And why did Ashley look so oddly and say nothing?”

— Margaret Mitchell

308. “As usual in the very young, she marveled that people could be so selfishly oblivious to her pain and the world rock along just the same, in spite of her heartbreak.”

— Margaret Mitchell

309. “He looked so swarthy and formidable and the heavy muscles in his shoulders swelled against his white linen coat in a way that frightened her. It seemed impossible that she had seen all this strength and insolence brought low. And she had held that black head in her lap!”

— Margaret Mitchell

310. “I feel sorry for her, but I don’t like people I’ve got to feel sorry for.”

— Margaret Mitchell

311. “Other lumbermen could only fume inwardly and state heatedly, in the bosoms of their families, that they wished to God Mrs. Kennedy was a man for just about five minutes. One.”

— Margaret Mitchell

312. “To her, all women, including her two sisters, were natural enemies in pursuit of the same prey – man.”

— Margaret Mitchell

313. “Scarlett knew the effort this involved both mentally and physically, for Melanie suffered torments of shyness in the presence of anything male.”

— Margaret Mitchell

314. “He was excited by the war fever and pleased that Scarlett had made so good a match, and who was he to stand in the way of young love when there was a war? Ellen, distracted, finally gave in as other mothers throughout the South were doing. Their leisured world had been turned topsy-turvy, and their pleadings, prayers and advice availed nothing against the powerful forces sweeping them along.”

— Margaret Mitchell

315. “With the introduction of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Miss Mitchell managed to create the two most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet. Scarlett springs alive in the first sentence of the book and holds the narrative center for over a thousand pages. She is a fabulous, pixilated, one-of-a-kind creation, and she does not utter a dull line in the entire book.”

— Margaret Mitchell

316. “This,” said a voice from the depths of the sofa, “is too much.”

— Margaret Mitchell

317. “I wouldn’t have grudged him your body. I know how little bodies mean – especially women’s bodies.”

— Margaret Mitchell

318. “I should love you, for you are charming and talented at many useless accomplishments. But many ladies have charm and accomplishments and are just as useless as you are. No, I don’t love you. But I do like you tremendously – for the elasticity of your conscience, for the selfishness which you seldom trouble to hide, and for the shrewd practicality in you which, I fear, you get from some not too remote Irish-peasant ancestor.”

— Margaret Mitchell

319. “My pet, I’ve been to the devil and he’s a very dull fellow.”

— Margaret Mitchell

320. “Just think, Scarlett, a half-million dollars, if you’d only restrained your fiery nature and not rushed into wedlock again!”

— Margaret Mitchell

321. “Archie’s carrying him to the vacant lot near Belle’s. He’s dead. Shot through the head.”

— Margaret Mitchell

322. “A hard little pain had started in her heart and was traveling slowly up toward her throat where it would become a lump and the lump would soon become tears.”

— Margaret Mitchell

323. “You should have insured a place for your children in the social scheme years ago – but you didn’t. You didn’t even bother to keep what position you had. And it’s too much to hope that you’ll mend your ways at this late date. You’re too anxious to make money and too fond of bullying people.”

— Margaret Mitchell

324. “Then why is your mouth all pursed up in that ridiculous way?”

— Margaret Mitchell

325. “Arrogance and callousness for the conquerors, bitter endurance and hatred for the conquered.”

— Margaret Mitchell

326. “You know she said I was going to marry a gentleman with jet-black hair and a long black mustache, and I don’t like black-haired gentlemen.”

— Margaret Mitchell

327. “I think we agreed on the occasion of our first meeting that you were no lady at all.”

— Margaret Mitchell

328. “El mundo puede perdonarlo todo, excepto a la gente que se soluciona sola sus asuntos.”

— Margaret Mitchell

329. “She married Frank Kennedy two weeks later after a whirlwind courtship which she blushingly told him left her too breathless to oppose his ardor any longer.”

— Margaret Mitchell

330. “And you old enough to be her father!”

— Margaret Mitchell

331. “They both see the truth of this war, but Ashley is willing to die about it and Rhett isn’t. I think that shows Rhett’s good sense. She paused a moment, horror struck that she could have such a thought about Ashley. They both see the same unpleasant truth, but Rhett likes to look it in the face and enrage people by talking about it-and Ashley can hardly bear to face it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

332. “Don’t spoil it,” he said quietly.”

— Margaret Mitchell

333. “You’ve been with me for months,” thought Scarlett grimly, looking at her sister-in-law, “and it’s never occurred to you that it’s charity you’re living on. And I guess it never will. You’re one of those people the war didn’t change and you go right on thinking and acting just like nothing had happened – like we were still rich as Croesus and had more food than we knew what to do with and guests didn’t matter. I guess I’ve got you on my neck for the rest of my life. But I won’t have Cathleen too.”

— Margaret Mitchell

334. “She was a woman now and youth was gone.”

— Margaret Mitchell

335. “She thought: “They both see the truth of this war, but Ashley is willing to die about it and Rhett isn’t. I think that shows Rhett’s good sense.”

— Margaret Mitchell

336. “Right here,” answered Rhett and, picking the child up, drew him to his knee. “You are boy enough for me, son.”

— Margaret Mitchell

337. “For a woman, love comes after marriage.”

— Margaret Mitchell

338. “But she felt that if Ashley succumbed to premeditated feminine tricks, she could never respect him as she now did. Any man who was fool enough to fall for a simper, a faint and an ‘oh, how wonderful you are!’ wasn’t worth having.”

— Margaret Mitchell

339. “If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?”

— Margaret Mitchell

340. “Scarlett had thrown herself on the bed and was sobbing at the top of her voice, sobbing for her lost youth and the pleasures of youth that were denied her, sobbing with the indignation and despair of a child who once could get anything she wanted by sobbing and now knows that sobbing can no longer help her. She burrowed her head in the pillow and cried and kicked with her feet at the tufted counterpane.”

— Margaret Mitchell

341. “The way to get a man interested and to hold his interest was to talk about him, and then gradually lead the conversation around to yourself-and keep it there. Scarlett would have felt some cause for alarm if Melanie had been saying: “How wonderful you are!!” or “How do you ever think of such things? My little ole brain would bust if I even tried to think about them!” But here she was, with a man at her feet, talking as seriously as if she were in church.”

— Margaret Mitchell

342. “Her love was still a young girl’s adoration for a man she could not understand, a man who possessed all the qualities she did not own but which she admired. He was still a young girl’s dream of the Perfect Knight and her dream asked no more than acknowledgment of his love, went no further than hopes of a kiss.”

— Margaret Mitchell

343. “Afternoon naps were a custom of the country and never were they so necessary as on the all-day parties, beginning early in the morning and culminating in a ball.”

— Margaret Mitchell

344. “You want me to say it? All right, I’ll say it. I love you.” He.”

— Margaret Mitchell

345. “As to why I have made no further advances,’ he pursued blandly, as though she had not signified that the conversation was at an end, ‘I am waiting for you to grow up a little more. You see, it wouldn’t be much fun for me to kiss you now and I’m quite selfish about my pleasures. I never fancied kissing children.”

— Margaret Mitchell

346. “How closely women clutch the very chains that bind them! You think the Hindu custom barbarous – but would you have had the courage to appear here tonight if the Confederacy hadn’t needed you?”

— Margaret Mitchell

347. “Nothing but my devotion to you would make me, at this stage of my career, turn horse thief – and thief of such a horse. Let me help you in.”

— Margaret Mitchell

348. “Indeed!” he said coolly. “Well, who’s the happy father? Ashley?”

— Margaret Mitchell

349. “Then – then you mean I’ve ruined it all – that you don’t love me any more?” “That’s right.”

— Margaret Mitchell

350. “These women, so swift to kindness, so tender to the sorrowing, so untiring in times of stress, could be as implacable as furies to any renegade who broke one small law of their unwritten code. This code was simple. Reverence for the Confederacy, honor to the veterans, loyalty to old forms, pride in poverty, open hands to friends and undying hatred to Yankees. Between them, Scarlett and Rhett had outraged every tenet of this code.”

— Margaret Mitchell