Top 350 Margaret Mitchell Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “I’ve never bothered about what people said.”

— Margaret Mitchell

302. “And now in this hour of greatest need, there was no one. It was incredible that she could be so completely alone, and frightened, and far from home.”

— Margaret Mitchell

303. “After all, they were Yankees and no one expected anything better from Yankees. So their unthinking insults to her state, her people and their morals, glanced off and never struck deep enough to cause her more than a well-concealed sneer until an incident occurred which made her sick with rage and showed her, if she needed any showing, how wide was the gap between North and South and how utterly impossible it was to bridge it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

304. “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

305. “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

306. “This is war time. We can’t think of the proprieties now.”

— Margaret Mitchell

307. “No one seemed to realize what really possessed her, what drove her like a mad woman. It was a passion to get her affairs in order before she had to retire behind doors, to have as much money as possible in case the deluge broke upon her again, to have a stout levee of cash against the rising tide of Yankee hate. Money was the obsession dominating her mind these days. When she thought of the baby at all, it was with baffled rage at the untimeliness of it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

308. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

311. “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

312. “Since eight o’clock she had been trying on and rejecting dresses, and now she stood dejected and irritable in lace pantalets, linen corset cover and three billowing lace and linen petticoats. Discarded garments lay about her on the floor, the bed, the chairs, in bright heaps of color and straying ribbons. The rose organdie with long pink sash was becoming, but she had worn it last summer when Melanie visited Twelve Oaks and she’d be sure to remember it. And might be catty enough to mention it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

313. “His one great flaw was making the terrible and exhilarating mistake of falling in love with Scarlett O’Hara.”

— Margaret Mitchell

314. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

316. “She was constitutionally unable to endure any man being in love with any woman not herself...”

— Margaret Mitchell

317. “With a heart that was heavy and a little bitter, she said: “You’ve been such a fool, Ashley. Why couldn’t you see that she was worth a million of me?”

— Margaret Mitchell

318. “My news is this,” he answered, grinning down at her. “I still want you more than any woman I’ve ever seen and now that Frank’s gone, I thought you’d be interested to know it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

319. “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

320. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

322. “Why, she had never had to do a thing for herself in all her life. There had always been someone to do things for her, to look after her, shelter and protect her and spoil her. It was incredible that she could be in such a fix. Not a friend, not a neighbor to help her. There had always been friends, neighbors, the competent hands of willing slaves. And now in this hour of greatest need, there was no one. It was incredible that she could be so completely alone, and frightened, and far from home.”

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

325. “Melanie had been her sword and her shield, her comfort and her strength.”

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

327. “Did you ever in your novel reading come across the old situation of the disinterested wife falling in love with her own husband?” “You know I don’t read novels,” she said and, trying to equal his jesting mood, went on: “Besides, you once 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.”

— Margaret Mitchell

328. “There will never again be men like them,” said Carreen softly. “No one can take their places.”

— Margaret Mitchell

329. “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

330. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

332. “She’d make them sorry. She’d show them. She didn’t quite see how she’d show them, but she’d do it all the same. She’d hurt them worse than they hurt her.”

— Margaret Mitchell

333. “But Gerald has known poverty, and he could never learn to lose money with good humor or good grace.”

— Margaret Mitchell

334. “They were convalescing slowly and lay scrawny and weak in their bed. While they had been unconscious, the world had changed. The Yankees had come, the darkies had gone and Mother had died.”

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

336. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

338. “The Cause they had thought could never fall had fallen forever.”

— Margaret Mitchell

339. “There was an exciting atmosphere about the place that uplifted her. It was as if she could actually feel the accelerated steady pulse of the town’s heart beating in time with her own.”

— Margaret Mitchell

340. “Ashley wrote me that we should not be fighting the Yankees. And that we have been betrayed into it by statesmen and orators mouthing catchwords and prejudices,” said Melly rapidly. “He said nothing in the world was worth what this war was going to do to us. He said there wasn’t anything at all to glory – it was just misery and dirt.”

— Margaret Mitchell

341. “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

342. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

344. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

346. “When such thoughts came she did not pray hastily to God, telling Him she did not mean it. God did not frighten her any more.”

— Margaret Mitchell

347. “For all his exasperating qualities, she grew to look forward to his calls. There was something exciting about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known. There was something breathtaking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact, something in the impertinence and bland mockery of his dark eyes that challenged her spirit to subdue him.”

— Margaret Mitchell

348. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

350. “Marriage was bad enough, but to be widowed-oh, then life was over forever!”

— Margaret Mitchell