Gone with the Wind is an American epic historical romance film from the year 1939. It was directed by Victor Fleming and is an adaptation of the 1936 novel by the same name that was written by Margaret Mitchell. In this article, we share with you the most memorable Gone with the Wind quotes from both the movie and the novel.
The movie follows Scarlett O’Hara (played by Vivien Leigh) who’s the daughter of plantation owner in Georgia and her romantic relationship with Ashley Wilkes (played by Leslie Howard), who is married to Melanie Hamilton (played by Olivia de Havilland), his cousin, while she is married to Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable). The movie takes place in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era.
When the film was released, it received generally positive reviews, although it was criticized due to its length at 4 hours. At the 12th Academy Awards that took place in 1940, the film won no less than 10 Academy Awards (8 competitive and 2 honorary), including the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and more.
The film also held a record of being the highest-earning film ever made for more than 25 years. If adjusted for monetary inflation, then Gone with the Wind remains the highest-grossing film in history even to this day.
Gone with the Wind is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, and in 1989 it became one of the 25 inaugural films that was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Table of Contents
- Scarlett O’ Hara Gone with the Wind Quotes
- Rhett Butler Gone with the Wind Quotes
- Mammy Gone with the Wind Quotes
- Gone with the Wind Quotes from the Book
- Interesting Facts about Gone with the Wind
Scarlett O’ Hara Gone with the Wind Quotes
Tara! Home. I’ll go home. And I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all… tomorrow is another day.
As God is my witness, as God is my witness they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.
Scarlett O’ Hara: Sir, you are no gentleman.
Rhett Butler: And you, Miss, are no lady.
I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.
If I said I was madly in love with you, you’d know I was lying.
Great balls of fire. Don’t bother me anymore, and don’t call me sugar.
Rhett Butler: So, you see I shall have to marry you.
Scarlett O’ Hara: I’ve never heard of such bad taste.
You’re coarse, and you’re conceited. And I think this conversation has gone far enough.
Fiddle-dee-dee! Ashley Wilkes told me he likes to see a girl with a healthy appetite!
Why does a girl have to be so silly to catch a husband?
Rhett Butler: Did you ever think of marrying just for fun?
Scarlett O’ Hara: Marriage, fun? Fiddle-dee-dee. Fun for men you mean.
Rhett Butler: You can come to my hanging and I’ll remember you in my will.
Scarlett O’ Hara: The only thing I’m afraid of is they won’t hang you in time to pay the taxes on Tara!
You’re a conceited, blackhearted varmint Rhett Butler. I don’t know why I let come and see me.
Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war; this war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides… there isn’t going to be any war.
I can shoot straight, if I don’t have to shoot too far.
I can’t let Tara go. I won’t let it go while there’s a breath left in my body.
Great balls of fire! HICCUP! It’s Rhett!
Dreams, dreams always dreams with you, never common sense.
Now isn’t this better than sitting at a table? A girl hasn’t got but two sides to her at the table.
Ooh, if I just wasn’t a lady, what wouldn’t I tell that varmint.
It ain’t fittin’… it ain’t fittin’. It jes’ ain’t fittin’… It ain’t fittin.
Rhett Butler Gone with the Wind Quotes
I’m leaving you, my dear. All you need now is a divorce and your dreams of Ashley can come true.
You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.
I can’t go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.
No, I don’t think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.
Scarlett O’ Hara: Rhett, Rhett… Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?
Rhett Butler: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Please don’t go on with this. Leave us some dignity to remember out of our marriage. Spare us this last.
My darling, you’re such a child. You think that by saying, “I’m sorry,” all the past can be corrected. Here, take my handkerchief. Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known you to have a handkerchief.
No, I’m through with everything here. I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn’t something left in life of charm and grace. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Scarlett O’Hara: Rhett, don’t. I shall faint.
Rhett Butler: I want you to faint. This is what you were meant for. None of the fools you’ve ever know have kissed you like this, have they? Your Charles, or your Frank, or your stupid Ashley.
Tell me, Scarlett, do you never shrink from marrying men you don’t love?
I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’ll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I’ll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There’s one thing I do know… and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we’re alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.
With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.
Scarlett O’Hara: I only know that I love you.
Rhett Butler: That’s your misfortune.
Take a good look my dear. It’s an historic moment you can tell your grandchildren about – how you watched the Old South fall one night.
I’m very drunk and I intend on getting still drunker before this evening’s over.
Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance.
A cat’s a better mother than you.
You go into the arena alone. The lions are hungry for you.
How fickle is woman.
Bonnie Blue Butler: London Bridge? Will it be falling down?
Rhett Butler: Well, it will if you want it to, darling.
And you, miss, are no lady. Don’t think I hold that against you. Ladies have never held any charm for me.
The Cause. The cause of living in the past is dying right in front of us.
You’re so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.
Mammy Gone with the Wind Quotes
What gentlemen says and what they thinks is two different things, and I ain’t noticed Mr. Ashley asking for to marry you.
Now, don’t eat too fast. Ain’t no need a having for it come right back up again!
If you don’t care what folks says about this family, I does! I is told you and told you that you can always tell a lady by the way she eat in front of folks like a bird. And I ain’t aiming for you to go to Mr. John Wilkes’ and eat like a field hand and gobble like a hog!
It like to turn my blood cold, the things they say to one another.
Yon she comes! Miss Scarlett, Miss Suellen, Miss Careen, your mother’s home! Acting like a wet nurse to them low-down poor white trash Slatterys instead of being here eating her supper. Cookie, stir up the fire! Miss Ellen’s home. Miss Ellen’s got no business wearing herself out.
Gone with the Wind Quotes from the Book
Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Well, my dear, take heart. Someday, 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
After all, tomorrow is another day!
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Hardships make or break people.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
It was better to know the worst than to wonder.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
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
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
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
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
And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Never pass up new experiences Scarlett. They enrich the mind.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
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
I’ve always had a weakness for lost causes once they’re really lost.
Margaret Mitchell, 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
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
You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Longing hearts could only stand so much longing.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
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
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
Scarlett, always save something to fear, even as you save something to love.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
If he’s forgotten me, I’ll make him remember me. I’ll make him want me again.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
She hasn’t your strength. She’s never had any strength. She’s never had anything but heart.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
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.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
There’ll always be wars because men love wars. Women don’t, but men do…
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Interesting Facts about Gone with the Wind
Okay. Now that we are all emotional, it’s time to calm down with some interesting facts about Gone with the Wind that may surprise you. Enjoy.
- Gone with the Wind Was Written Out of Boredom – At the age of 25, Margaret Mitchell worked at the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine as a journalist. Mitchell suffered from a recurring ankle injury and so, decided to take a leave in order to rest and recover. When it took too much time for the ankle to heal, Mitchell decided to occupy herself by writing and just like that, out of boredom, the Gone with the Wind novel was born.
- There Was No Intention to Publish the Book – Mitchell worked on the novel for many years, but never had any intention of publishing it. One day, a so-called “friend” heard that Mitchell was intended to write a book (even though it has already been written), she said that she couldn’t imagine Mitchell writing a book at all. Mitchell got annoyed by this remark and decided to take her manuscript to a Macmillan editor the day after. However, she soon changed her mind and asked for the editor to send her the manuscript back.
- Scarlett Had a Different Name Originally – Originally, Scarlett was named Pansy and it would have stayed her name, if not for the request of the publisher who asked Mitchell to change her name. And so, the name was changed from Pansy O’Hara to Scarlett O’Hara.
- No One Knows What Happened with Rhett and Scarlett – No, not even Mitchell herself. Like I said, no one knows what happened with Rhett and Scarlett. Mitchell left the ending of the novel with no real ending, and even in her head, she had no ending for the story. So, each can imagine his own preferred ending to the novel.
- The Movie Right for the Book Set a Record – In 1936, David O. Selznick purchased the movie rights for the staggering amount of $50,000! Back then, it was the most that was paid for rights to a book. Mitchell did not want to be involved in the production of the movie, but it is said that despite a few details, she loved the film adaptation.
For more timeless quotes from the literature, please visit our pages dedicated to Emily Dickinson quotes, Jane Austen quotes, Neil Gaiman quotes, and Sylvia Plath quotes.