Top 350 Margaret Mitchell Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “Well, yes. You see, I’ve invested a good deal of money in you, and I’d hate to lose it.”

— Margaret Mitchell

304. “Pretty young Mrs. Hamilton, with her dimple and her jingling earbobs and her helpless little ways, blowing a man’s face to a pulp and then burying him in a hastily scratched-out hole!”

— Margaret Mitchell

305. “Then above the confused sounds Stuart Tarleton’s voice rose, in an exultant shout, ‘Yee-aay-ee!’ as if he were on the hunting field. And she heard for the first time, without knowing it, the Rebel yell.”

— Margaret Mitchell

306. “We should have paid heed to cynics like Butler who knew, instead of statesmen who felt – and talked.”

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

308. “I’ve never bothered about what people said.”

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

310. “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

311. “Be a little man, Wade, and stop crying or I will come over there and slap you.”

— Margaret Mitchell

312. “Well, they get results, don’t they?”

— Margaret Mitchell

313. “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

314. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

316. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

318. “She felt little affection for the child, hide the fact though she might.”

— Margaret Mitchell

319. “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

320. “She whispered “Yes” before she even thought.”

— Margaret Mitchell

321. “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

322. “Child, it’s a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen.”

— Margaret Mitchell

323. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

325. “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

326. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

328. “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

329. “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

330. “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

331. “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

332. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

335. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

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

— Margaret Mitchell

338. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

340. “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

341. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

343. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

345. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

347. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell

349. “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

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

— Margaret Mitchell