Gone with the Wind is a classic American novel by Margaret Mitchell.
It tells the story of the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
Over the years, the novel has spawned many memorable quotes about love, life, and the human spirit.
Here are some of the best Gone with the Wind quotes that will move and inspire you.
Gone With The Wind Quotes With Page Numbers Part 1
“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.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, The Narrator about Scarlett O’Hara, Chapter 3, Page 58
“I wish to Heaven I was married,” she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. “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… I can’t eat another bite.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara, Chapter 5, Page 79
“As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen such a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate’s appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath. She felt that she should be insulted by such a look as was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted. She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face. It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, and high forehead and the wide-set eyes.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, The Narrator about Scarlett O’Hara, Chapter 6, Page 96
“Sir,”she said,”you are no gentleman!”
An apt observation,”he answered airily.”And, you, Miss, are no lady.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 6, Pages 119. 120
“Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 6, Page 124
Part 2
“How closely women clutch the very chains that bind them!”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 9, Page 183
“Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That’s the beginning of wisdom.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 9, Page 192
“Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 9, Page 193
“The liar was the hottest to defend his veracity, the coward his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness, and the cad his honor”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 12, Page 224
“All wars are sacred,” he said. “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? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and the fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ’save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ’down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 12, Page 231
“I’d cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 15, Page 273
Part 3
“You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 17, Page 310
“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, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 17, Page 310
“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.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 17, Page 311
“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, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 19, Page 335
“Dear Scarlett! You aren’t helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God help the Yankees if they should get you.” -Rhett Butler”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 23, Page 389
“Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many babies? But no, God didn’t make them. Stupid people made them.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 24, Page 409
“Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: ‘As God is my witness, and God is my witness, the Yankees aren’t going to lick me. I’m going to live through this, and when it’s over, I’m never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill – as God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 25, Page 428
“It was better to know the worst than to wonder.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 26, Page 446
“Child, it’s a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she’s faced the worst she can’t ever really fear anything again. …Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love…”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 26, Page 452
“Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 26, Page 453
“Longing hearts could only stand so much longing.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 30, Page 507
Part 4
“He had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of Scarlett O’Hara going forth to conquer the world in her mother’s velvet curtains and the tail feathers of a rooster.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 32, Page 551
“Never pass up new experiences, Scarlett, They enrich the mind.” – Rhett Butler”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 35, Page 609
“I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter Chapter 36, Page 629
“Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them!”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 33, Page 668
“That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 33, Page 678
“Make up your mind to this. If you are different, you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents’ generation and from your children’s generation too. They’ll never understand you and they’ll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: ‘There’s a chip off the old block,’ and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: ‘What an old rip Grandma must have been!’ and they’ll try to be like you.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 33, Page 680
“Hardships make or break people.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 33, Page 681
“How wonderful to know someone who was bad and dishonorable and a cheat and a liar, when all the world was filled with people who would not lie to save their souls and who would rather starve than do a dishonorable deed!”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 826
“I bare my soul and you are suspicious! No, Scarlett, this is a bona fide honorable declaration. I admit that it’s not in the best of taste, coming at this time, but I have a very good excuse for my lack of breeding. I’m going away tomorrow for a long time and I fear that if I wait till I return you’ll have married some one else with a little money. So I thought, why not me and my money? Really, Scarlett, I can’t go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands. ”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 832
“Forgive me for startling you with the impetuosity of my sentiments, my dear Scarlett—I mean, my dear Mrs. Kennedy. It cannot have escaped your notice that for some time past the friendship I have had in my heart for you has ripened into a deeper feeling, a feeling more beautiful, more pure, more sacred. Dare I name it you? Ah! It is love which makes me so bold!”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 834
“Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 834
“I want to make you faint. I will make you faint. You’ve had this coming to you for years. None of the fools you’ve known have kissed you like this – have they? Your precious Charles or Frank or your stupid Ashley… I said your stupid Ashley. Gentlemen all – what do they know about women? What do they know about you? I know you.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 835
“If I said I was madly in love with you you’d know I was lying.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 837
“No, my dear, I’m not in love with you, no more than you are with me, and if I were, you would be the last person I’d ever tell. God help the man who ever really loves you. You’d break his heart, my darling, cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn’t even trouble to sheathe her claws.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 838
“My pet, the world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business” – Rhett Butler”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 47, Page 845
Part 5
“Perhaps – I want the old days back again and they’ll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears. ”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 53, Page 923
“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it’s no worse than it is.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 53, Page 926
“She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 54, Page 940
“And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 60, Page 1000
“Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 61, Page 1015
“I loved something I made up, something that’s just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. 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. And I wouldn’t see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes—and not him at all.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 61, Page 1016
“You’re so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 63, Page 1029
“…but I love you!”
“That’s your misfortune.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 63, Page 1033
“I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can’t… My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 63, Page 1035
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 63, Page 1035
“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, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 63, Page 1036
“I’ll go crazy if I think about losing him now. I’ll think of it tomorrow.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 63, Page 1036
“After all, tomorrow is another day!”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Chapter 63, Page 1037
What is the most famous line in Gone with the Wind?
“I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can’t… My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
~Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Rhett to Scarlett O’Hara, Chapter 63, Page 1035
Gone With The Wind Summary
Gone With the Wind is a classic American novel by Margaret Mitchell, published in 1936. It is set in Clayton County and Atlanta, Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era.
The novel tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara, the strong-willed daughter of an Irish immigrant plantation owner, who struggles to survive the war and maintain her home, Tara, in the chaos of the changing South.
Scarlett falls in love with the dashing Rhett Butler but ultimately chooses to marry the dutiful Ashley Wilkes.
As Scarlett and the people of the South attempt to rebuild their lives and society, they must come to terms with the new reality of freedom for African Americans and the end of the antebellum way of life.
The novel ends with Scarlett determined to win back Rhett while the future of the South remains uncertain.
Gone With the Wind is a sweeping historical romance and a beloved classic.