"It isn't that I mind splitting logs here in the mud, but I do mind what it stands for. I do mind, very much, the loss of the beauty of the old life I loved. Scarlett, before the war, life was beautiful. There was a glamor to it, a perfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it like Grecian art. Maybe it wasn't so to everyone. I know that now. But to me, living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. I belonged in that life. I was a part of it. And now it is gone and I am out of place in this new life, and I am afraid. Now, I know that in the old days it was a shadow show I watched. I avoided everything which was not shadowy, people and situations which were too real, too vital. I resented their intrusion. I tried to avoid you too, Scarlett. You were too full of living and too real and I was cowardly enough to prefer shadows and dreams."
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Chapter 31
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(novel)
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Gone with the Wind (novel)
Gone with the Wind is a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, about the spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to come out of the poverty she finds herself in during and after the Civil War. It was adapted into an enormously popular 1939 film.
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