Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

There are too many other things to think about—things that can be helped without my thinking of those I can’t help.

She had never understood either of the men she had loved and so she had lost them both. 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.

But I do love him. I've loved him for years. Love can't change to apathy in a minute.

"Captain Butler, you must not hold me so tightly. Everybody is looking."
“If no one were looking, would you care?"

Don't you suppose I know that you've lain in my arms and pretended I was Ashley Wilkes? Pleasant thing, that. Rather ghostly, in fact. Like having three in a bed where there ought to be just two." Oh, yes, you've been faithful to me because Ashley wouldn't have 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, stubborn 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, any more than you'll ever have Ashley's mind. And that's why I'm sorry for you.

If you haven't done anything wrong, it's because you haven't had the opportunity.

Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

I mustn't bawl; I mustn't beg. I mustn't do anything to risk his contempt. He must respect me even — even if he doesn't love me.

— I only know that I love you!
— That's your misfortune.

I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new.
What is broken is broken--and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.

“Scarlett, you do like me, don’t you?”
“Well, sometimes,” she answered cautiously.“When you aren’t acting like a varmint.”
“I think you like me because I am a varmint."

"All you've done is to be different from other women and you've made a little success at it. As I've told you before, that is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned! Scarlett, the mere fact that you've made a success of your mill is an insult to every man who hasn't succeeded. Remember, a well-bred female's place is in the home and she should know nothing about this busy, brutal world."

The fluttering lashes were his undoing.

It had been her experience that the liar was the hottest to defend his veracity, the coward his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness, and the cad his honor.

“Sir,” she said, “you are no gentleman!”
“An apt observation,” he answered airily.“And, you, Miss, are no lady.”

You might possibly sponge the spots off a leopard but he'd remain a leopard, just the same.