If I said I was madly in love with you, I'd be lying and what's more, you'd know it.
Southerners can never resist a losing cause.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that Southerners have a tendency to support even doomed efforts, embodying a sense of loyalty and resilience.
Margaret Mitchell's quote highlights a cultural characteristic often associated with the Southern United States, where there is a strong inclination to stand by and support causes that may be perceived as 'losing'. This reflects a deeper sense of loyalty, pride, and defiance in the face of adversity, indicating that such attachment is woven into the identity of the people, representing their commitment to tradition and perseverance despite the odds.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on perseverance, one might quote Mitchell to illustrate the tenacity of communities in challenging times.
More from Margaret Mitchell
All quotes →You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he's going to jail. - Rhett Butler
It's a curse - this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.
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.
men are so conceited they’ll believe anything that flatters them
Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so courteously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk about Europe and books and music and poetry and things that interested her not at all - and yet so desirable?
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Pride only, the chief of all iniquities, can make us treat gifts as if they were rightful attributes of our nature, and, while receiving benefits, rob our Benefactor of His due glory.
If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.
The most complete revenge is not to imitate the aggressor.
Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.
A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.