Southern Belle Quotes

“How southern belle of her.”
― Kelly Moran, Puppy Love

“Kaldar smiled at her. Now there was a work of art. If she were just a girl and he were just a man, and they met at a party, that smile would've guaranteed him a date. The man was hot. There was no doubt. But right now, all it would get him was a solid punch in those even teeth.
Audrey laughed. "Aren't you sweet? Tell me, do girls usually throw their panties at you when you do that?"
He grinned wider, and she glimpsed the funny evil spark in his eyes. "Do men throw money when you do your little Southern belle?”
― Ilona Andrews, Fate's Edge

“You boys may be gentlemen," Dusty said. "But I'm about to shoot like a lady. You ready, baby?”
― Stephanie Kate Strohm, Prince in Disguise

“The belle is a product of the Deep South, which is a product of the nineteenth century and the Age of Romanticism. Virginia is a product of the eighteenth century. It's impossible to extract a belle from the Age of Reason.”
― Florence King, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady: A Memoir

“[The party] was held at her cousin's house and it lasted for three days. For the duration, they all slept only from dawn to noon and lived on little but oysters and champagne and pastry. Each evening there was music and dancing, and then late in the nights, under a moon growing to full, they went out on the slow water in rowing boats. It was a strange time of war fever, and even young men previously considered dull and charmless suddenly acquired an aura of glamour shimmering about them, for they all suspected that shortly many of them would be dead. During those brief days and nights, any man that wished might become somebody's darling.”
― Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

“Is she pretty?”
That would be a hell yes. Big soft eyes, full pink lips. Legs and tight skirts. And those damn cowboy boots. And the yoga pants and bra top she wore sailing. Long blond hair—-at least he thought it was long; she always kept it wound up and clipped in a messy bun. He’d dated white girls before, a time or two. But never someone that white, from Texas. Or that young. She was what, fifteen years younger, at least. An itty-bitty thing who could throw a grown man to the ground.
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s real pretty.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“[Scarlett] knew how to smile so that her dimples leaped, how to walk pigeon-toed so that her wide hoop skirts swayed entrancingly, how to look up into a man's face and then drop her eyes and bat the lids rapidly so that she seemed a-tremble with gentle emotion. Most of all she learned how to conceal from men a sharp intelligence beneath a face as sweet and bland as a baby's.

Ellen, by soft admonition, . . . labored to inculcate in her the qualities that would make her truly desirable as a wife.

"You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate," Ellen told her daughter. "You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls."

[Ellen] taught her all that a gentlewoman should know, but she learned only the outward signs of gentility. The inner grace from which these signs should spring, she never learned nor did she see any reason for learning it. Appearances were enough, for the appearances of ladyhood won her popularity and that was all she wanted. . . .

At sixteen, thanks to Mammy and Ellen, she looked sweet, charming and giddy, but she was, in reality, self-silled, vain and obstinate. She had the easily stirred passions of her Irish father and nothing except the thinnest veneer of her mother's unselfish and forbearing nature. . .

It was not that these two loving mentors deplored Scarlett's high spirits, vivacity and charm. These were traits of which Southern women were proud. It was Gerald's headstrong and impetuous nature in her that gave them concern, and they sometimes feared they would not be able to conceal her damaging qualities until she had made a good match. But Scarlett intended to marry-and marry Ashley-and she was willing to appear demure, pliable and scatterbrained, if those were the qualities that attracted men. Just why men should be this way, she did not know. She only knew that such methods worked. It never interested her enough to try to think out the reason for it, for she knew nothing of the inner workings of any human being's mind, not even her own. She knew only that if she did or said thus-and-so, men would unerringly respond with the complementary thus-and-so. It was like a mathematical formula and no more difficult . . .

If she knew little about men's minds, she knew even less about the minds of women, for they interested her less. She had never had a girl friend, and she never felt any lack on that account. To her, all women, including her two sisters, were natural enemies in pursuit of the same prey-man.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“In the back of my closet, I saw a pink wrap dress that was hopelessly Southern. Pale pink, with little flutter sleeves all in a Swiss-dot fabric that you could see through if you held it up to the light. I would need nude undergarments, which I was sure I had. My mom always told me never to wear wild undies, you never knew who'd see them! What if I got in a car wreck?
I pulled my hair up and allowed a few red curls to fall out of a messy bun at the nape of my neck. I slipped the dress on and gave my lips a quick swipe of gloss. I chose small gold hoop earrings that had belonged to Gran at one time and stepped into a pair of gold flip-flops. I looked at myself in the mirror and reminded myself I was going to a farm.
Jim walked in. "Ready for the big... Oh, my God, Magnolia!"
"What? Too much?" I said, grimacing.
"Good God, no! You look absolutely perfect! You look like a mouthwatering pink confection! A true Southern Magnolia!”
― Victoria Benton Frank, My Magnolia Summer

“As she gracefully descended down portico, the white gloved hand of the lady of the estate met the white-glove worn by a Negro footman, as a vast expanse of hoop skirt filled the carriage doorway. It was a skirt of fine white lawn with ruffles embroidered with little pink and blue flowers complete with green stems. The white trash girl looked on in amazement, involuntarily wincing at the thought of the long hours plantation slave seamstresses had devoted to decorating a dress that might only be worn a half dozen times and survive as many launderings.”
― Gwen Bistrow

“Ariel looked queenly and elegant and ten years younger than her real age. Like Emma, her hair was blond and her boobs were big. She drove a convertible, wore diamonds with denim, and she never missed a homecoming game. She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“Hadley Beckett from Nashville, Tennessee, who had a Bachelor of Business Administration degree but had dropped out of culinary school. Lover of fried okra and hot chicken and sweet tea. Henceforth those things wouldn't be used against me as insults. Henceforth other chefs- of the too-big-for their-britches variety- wouldn't look down their noses at me for calling it powdered sugar rather than confectioners sugar.”
― Bethany Turner, Hadley Beckett's Next Dish

“Maybe violets don't have thorns like roses, or heavy fragrances like lilies or magnolias, but they are just as strong.”
― Victoria Benton Frank, My Magnolia Summer

“Heeding Myrna’s counsel with the eager assistance of various young men, one of the simple lovelies suffered a nervous breakdown; the other attempted unsuccessfully to slash her wrists with a broken Coca-Cola bottle. Myrna’s explanation was that the girls had been too reactionary to begin with, and with renewed vigor, she preached sex in every classroom and pizza parlor, almost getting herself raped by a janitor in the Social Studies building.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces