Rhett Butler – Character Quotes

"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.

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

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.

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

“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."

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 think that by saying, 'I'm sorry,' all the errors and hurts of years past can be remedied, obliterated from the mind, all the poison drawn from old wounds...

Never pass up new experiences. They enrich the mind.

But, Scarlett, did it ever occur to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?... Mine wore out... 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.... 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.

If you were run over by a railroad train your death wouldn’t sanctify the railroad company, would it?

Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known you to have a handkerchief.

You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail

"Let me hold the baby, Scarlett. Well, he certainly looks like Frank. All except the whiskers, but give him time."
"I hope not. It's a girl."