All Southern women consider themselves one of two things. You're either a Scarlett, or you're a Melanie. I can remember reading Gone With The Wind for the first time and actually hating Scarlett O'Hara for the way she treated Rhett Butler. What was she doing? He was dark, handsome, rich, and a notorious bad boy. He was a devilish cad, a well known flatterer, and famous womanizer. Oh my dear lord, the way they sparred! They way they challenged each other! Their infamous fights and make ups! I believe my favorite things about Rhett was the way he spoke to Scarlett. The way he didn't mind to tell her how it was in a world where every man she had ever known was falling head over heels just to have her talk to them. Re-reading this book has made me realize now, more than ever, that Rhett Butler has some serious style. Here's a list of quotes that will have you swooning, and also make you realize that Mr. Butler truly was the original southern bad boy.
* "Sir", she said, "you are no gentleman."
An apt observation, he answered airily.
"And you miss are no lady."
* "Until you've lost your reputation, you never really realize what a burden it was, or what freedom truly is."
* “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.”
* "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. ”
* “I only know that I love you."
"That's your misfortune.”
* “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.”
* "Gentlemen all - what do they know about women? What do they know about you? I know you.”
* " 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.”
* “[Yankees] are pretty much like southerners except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents.”
* “Madam, you flatter yourself. I do not want to marry you or anyone else. I am not a marrying man.”
* “When I first met you, I thought: There is a girl in a million. She
isn't like these other silly little fools who believe everything their
mammas tell them and act on it, no matter how they feel. And conceal all
their feelings and desires and little heartbreaks behind a lot of sweet
words. I thought: Miss O'Hara is a girl of rare spirit. She knows what
she wants and she doesn't mind speaking her mind–or throwing vases.”
* “Did it ever occur to you that I loved you as much as a man can love a
woman? Loved you for years before I finally got you? During the war I'd
go away and try to forget you, but I couldn't and I always had to come
back. After the war I risked arrest, just to come back and find you. I
cared so much I believe I would have killed Frank Kennedy if he hadn't
died when he did. I loved you but I couldn't let you know it. You're so
brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it
over their heads like a whip.”
* “You can't make me mad by calling me names that are true. Certainly I'm a
rascal, and why not? It's a free country and a man may be a rascal if
he chooses. It's only hypocrites like you, my dear lady, just as black
at heart but trying to hide it, who becomes enraged when called by their
right names.”
* “All you've done is to be different from other women & you've made
little success of it. As I've told you before, that is the one
UNFORGIVABLE sin in society. Be different & be damned!"
*"I'm very drunk. And I intend on getting still drunker before this evening's over."
* “I stood there in the doorway before you saw me and I watched you,' he
said.'And I watched the other girls. And they all looked as though their
faces came out of one mold. Yours didn’t.”
* “I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost.”
* “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.”
* “Indeed? Well, I shall bring you presents so long as it pleases me and
so long as I see things that will enhance your charms. I shall bring
you dark-green watered silk for a frock to match the bonnet. And I warn
you that I am not kind. I am tempting you with bonnets and bangles and
leading you into a pit. Always remember I never do anything without
reason and I never give anything without expecting something in return.
I always get paid.”
* “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.”
* “Hush," he said. "I am asking you to marry me. Would you be convinced if I knelt down?”
* “I'm tempting you with fine gifts until your girlish ideals are quite worn away and you are at my mercy.”
* “Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.”
* “I'm riding you with a slack rein, my pet, but don't forget that I'm riding with curb and spurs just the same.”
* “You have eternity in which to explain and only one night to be a martyr
in the amphitheater. Get out, darling, and let me see the lions eat
you.”
* "You can go to the Devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.'
'My pet, I've been to the Devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, not even for you.”
* “But, hell, I wouldn't have grudged him your body. I know how little
bodies mean - especially women's bodies. But I do grudge him your heart
and your dear, hard, unscrupulous mind. He doesn't want your mind, the
fool, and I don't want your body. I can buy women cheap. But I do want
your mind and your heart, and I'll never have them.”
* “Scarlett, when you are forty-five, perhaps you will know what I'm
talking about and then perhaps you, too, will be tired of imitation
gentry and shoddy manners and cheap emotions. But I doubt it. I think
you'll always be more attracted by glitter than by gold.”
* “He wasn't a gentleman and there was no telling what men would do
when they weren't gentlemen. There was no standard to judge them by.”
Finally....
* “I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can't... My dear, I don't give a damn.”
