Margaret Mitchell

“But, Ashley, what are you afraid of?''Oh, nameless things. Things which sound very silly when they areput into words. Mostly of having life suddenly become too real, ofbeing brought into personal, too personal, contact with some of thesimple facts of life. It isn't that I mind splitting logs here inthe mud, but I do mind what it stands for. I do mind, very much,the loss of the beauty of the old life I loved. Scarlett, beforethe war, life was beautiful. There was a glamor to it, aperfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it like Grecianart. Maybe it wasn't so to everyone. I know that now. But to me,living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. Ibelonged in that life. I was a part of it. And now it is gone andI am out of place in this new life, and I am afraid. Now, I knowthat in the old days it was a shadow show I watched. I avoidedeverything which was not shadowy, people and situations which weretoo real, too vital. I resented their intrusion.”

“She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate.”

“Why, my goodness, honey. After looking at all those pictures of seraphic and perspirationless babes for so long in the privacy of a foxhole, what is a poor doughfoot going to do when he comes home and discovers that American women are, after all, biological and given, under stress, to shiny noses?”

“My! How the grapes are sour today!" -Rhett Butler”

“Mistress! What would I get out of that except a passel of brats?" -Scarlett O'Hara”

“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." -Rhett Butler”

“You should be kissed and often, by someone who knows how.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Pride & honor & truth & virtue & kindliness," he enumerated silkily. "You are right, Scarlett. They aren't important when a boat is sinking. But look around you at your friends. Either they are bringing their boats ashore safely with cargoes intact or they are content to go down with all flags flying.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Don't you suppose men get surprised after they're married to findthat their wives do have sense?""Well, it's too late den. Dey's already mahied.”

“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.”

“[...]desear y conseguir eran dos cosas distintas. La vida no le había enseñado que correr no siempre significa alcanzar.”

“Yes, life was very sweet and cosy with Scarlett - as long as she had her own way”

“- Não sei se interprete as suas palavras como um galanteio, se não - replicou Scarlett, indecisa.- Não se trata de nenhum galanteio - explicou ele. - Quando é que perderá essa mania de imaginar galanteios em todas as palavras que os homens lhe dirigem?- Só depois de morta - respondeu ela.E sorriu, pensando que encontraria sempre homens que lhe dirigissem piropos, mesmo que Rhett nunca o fizesse.- Presunção e água benta cada qual toma a que quer - comentou Rhett. - Graças a Deus, tem ao menos uma virtude: a de ser sincera.”

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

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

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

“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?”

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

“And don't think you can lay down the load, ever. Because you can't. I know.”

“She hasn't your strength. She's never had any strength. She's never had anything but heart.”

“what will the South be like without all our fine boys? What would the South have been if they had lived?”

“Out of the welter of rapture and anger and heartbreak and hurt pride that he had left, depression emerged to sit upon her shoulder like a carrion crow.”

“Melly couldn't say boo to a goose.”

“[Yankees] are pretty much like southerners except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents.”

“That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!”

“These three ladies disliked and distrusted one another as heartily as the First Triumvirate of Rome, and their close alliance was probably for the same reason.”

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

“In fact, the mothers of all her girl friends impressed on their daughters the necessity of being helpless, clinging, doe-eyed creatures. Really, it took alot of sense to cultivate and hold such a pose.”

“Why is it a girl has to be so silly to catch a husband?”“Ah specs it’s kase gempmums doan know whut dey wants. Dey jes’ knows whut dey thinks dey wants. An’ givin’ dem whut dey thinksdey wants saves a pile of mizry an’ bein’ a ole maid. An’ dey thinks dey wants mousy lil gals wid bird’s tastes an’ no sense atall. It doan make a gempmum feel lak mahyin’ a lady ef he suspicions she got mo’ sense dan he has.”

“There was a glow of grim pride in her usually gentle face, approbation and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett's own bosom.'Why-why-she's like me! She understands how I feel'!”

“I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.”

“It had begun to dawn on him that this same sweet pretty little head was a “good head for figures.” In fact, a much better one than his own and the knowledge was disquieting. He was thunderstruck to discover that she could swiftly add a long column of figures in her head when he needed a pencil and paper for more than three figures. And fractions presented no difficulties to her at all. He felt there was something unbecoming about a woman understanding fractions and business matters and he believed that, should a woman be so unfortunate as to have such unladylike comprehension, she should pretend not to. Now he disliked talking business with her as much as he had enjoyed it before they were married. Then he had thought it all beyond her mental grasp and it had been pleasant to explain things to her. Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual masculine indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.”

“It had been so long since she had seen him and she had lived on memories until they were worn thin.”

“Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual masculine indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.”

“Yankees in Georgia! How did they ever get in?”

“I only know that I love you.That's your misfortune.”

“Scarlett's mind went back through the years to the still hot noon at Tara when grey smoke curled above a blue-clad body and Melanie stood at the top of the stairs with Charles' sabre in her hand. Scarlett remembered that she had thought at the time: 'How silly! Melly couldn't even heft that sword!' But now she knew that had the necessity arisen, Melanie would have charged down those stairs and killed the Yankee - or been killed herself.”

“All really nice girls wonder when men don't try to kiss them. They know they shouldn't want them to and they know they must act insulted if they do, but just the same, they wish the men would try.”

“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.”

“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.”

“And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not... I kept on loving the pretty clothes - and not him at all.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Ellen's life was not easy, nor was it happy, but she did not expect life to be easy, and, if it was not happy, that was woman's lot. It was a man's world, and she accepted it as such. The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him. Men were rough of speech and often drunk. Women ignored the lapses of speech and put the drunkards to bed without bitter words. Men were rude and outspoken, women were always kind, gracious and forgiving.”

“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.”

“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything.”