Top 500 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “I wished he were less remote; and I anything but the creature that I was in my shabby coat and skirt, my broad-brimmed schoolgirl hat.”

— Daphne du Maurier

452. “What I had thought was love for me, for myself as a person, was not love. It was just that he was a man, and I was his wife and was young, and he was lonely.”

— Daphne du Maurier

453. “When I go, Danny, I want to go quickly, like the snuffing out of a candle.”

— Daphne du Maurier

454. “Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die; the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched.”

— Daphne du Maurier

455. “He had no answer to that, or to any of her thoughts, and the smile that hovered a moment at the corner of her mouth and went as swiftly – it happened now, in her pretence of sleep – had no connection with him, or with his feelings, or with their life together. It was remote, the smile of someone he had never known.”

— Daphne du Maurier

456. “The months of anxiety had taken their toll of my mother, with the journeys backwards and forwards to Paris which had continued during the summer. She had never cared for the capital; and now, she told us, she had no desire to set foot in it again.”

— Daphne du Maurier

457. “The world I knew has gone. This is tomorrow.”

— Daphne du Maurier

458. “They’ve been drinking too,” said Pappy, examining the tooth-glass. “Cognac, judging by the smell. I never knew my daughter drank.” “She doesn’t,” said Celia, smoothing Pappy’s bed. “She always has orangeade. Unless it’s a first night, when she has champagne.” “Then it must be Niall,” said Pappy. “Someone – and who can it be but Niall? – has been pouring cognac into my tooth-glass. I shall attack Freada. Freada is responsible.” He filled the tooth-glass with cognac for himself.”

— Daphne du Maurier

459. “This astonished us as children, for we grew up beside the charcoal burners, called them by their Christian names, watched them at work, visited them in their log huts when they were ill; but to my mother, the bailiff’s daughter from St. Christophe, gently nurtured, educated and well spoken, the rude shouts of these wild men of the woods at midnight must have sounded like devils in hell.”

— Daphne du Maurier

460. “Mournful, mournful. I wanted to be alone, but the others would laugh and talk. Always the past, just out of reach, waiting to be recaptured. Why did I feel so sad thinking of a past I had never known?”

— Daphne du Maurier

461. “He realised now that there was no hope for his left eye; detachment of the retina was complete; and just before Christmas came again the oculist told him that there was a chance his right eye would also become affected. The shock was terrible.”

— Daphne du Maurier

462. “A mock trial was set in motion, and the mayor Montlibert forced to interrogate the prisoners. It was obvious, even to someone like myself who knew nothing of the law, that none of the men had done wrong. No arms had been found in the house. The men had no pretensions to being aristocrats. Monsieur Villette, who had presided over the proceedings in the church, spoke up in their defense.”

— Daphne du Maurier

463. “The feel of her own pillow, and of her own blankets reassured her. Both were familiar. And being tired was familiar too, it was a solid bodily ache, like the tiredness after too much jumping or cricket.”

— Daphne du Maurier

464. “The world of today asleep, and my world not awakened, or not as yet, until the drug possessed me.”

— Daphne du Maurier

465. “He would stare down at us in our new world from a long-distant past – a past where men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways, a past of narrow stairways and dim dungeons, a past of whispers in the dark, of shimmering rapier blades, of silent, exquisite courtesy.”

— Daphne du Maurier

466. “It wasn’t like that for us,” said Niall, “all bright, and clean, and purged and commonplace. Plastic toys. Things that go in and out.” “Perhaps it was,” said Maria; “perhaps we don’t remember.” “I do remember,” said Niall. “I remember everything. That’s the trouble. I remember much too much.”

— Daphne du Maurier

467. “Bitterness goes with people when they die.”

— Daphne du Maurier

468. “I like the look of you and the feel of you, and that’s enough for any man. It ought to be enough for a woman too.”

— Daphne du Maurier

469. “Most people would send their letters and telegrams to the Haymarket. The flowers too. When you came to think of it the whole business was horribly like having an operation. The telegrams, the flowers. And the long hours of waiting.”

— Daphne du Maurier

470. “My brother Jem, damn him, he was the baby. Hanging onto mother’s skirts when Matt and I were grown men. I never did see eye to eye with Jem. Too smart he is, too sharp with his tongue. Oh, they’ll catch him in time and hang him, same as they did my father.”

— Daphne du Maurier

471. “In fact, one of the first decrees passed, the day after the storming of the Tuileries, was an order giving every municipality throughout the country the right to arrest suspects on sight.”

— Daphne du Maurier

472. “Nonsense,’ snapped Ellen. ‘It would cause a panic at once. If you feel ill, go to your room and lie down. The master is going to make up this medicine.’ ‘If it’s like the stuff he gave me for kidney trouble, I’d rather have the cholera, madam,’ said the frightened woman.”

— Daphne du Maurier

473. “Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.”

— Daphne du Maurier

474. “Then I was glad of the presence of Jake near to me at all times, for a horror would come upon me because of the vast solitude of space and the solitary splendor of the regions where we were drifting; even the white stars seemed cold and terribly remote, and we, poor human beings on our little ship, were wretched and pathetic in our attempts to equal their wisdom, nor had we any right to venture upon the imperturbability of these waters.”

— Daphne du Maurier

475. “I tried Magnus two or three times later, but there was never a reply, and I spent a restless evening unable to settle to newspapers, books, records, or TV. Finally, fed up with myself and the whole problem, to which there seemed no solution, I went early to bed, and slept, to my astonishment when I awoke next morning, amazingly well.”

— Daphne du Maurier

476. “The only time I got into trouble was when I forged M’s signature on the weekly report we had to take home every Friday and take back to school again signed by one of our parents. The reason I did so was that M happened to be out at the time and I thought I could save myself trouble.”

— Daphne du Maurier

477. “She had beauty that endured, and a smile that was not forgotten. Somewhere her voice still lingered, and the memory of her words.”

— Daphne du Maurier

478. “We change from the awakening questing creatures we were once, afire with wonder, and expectancy, and doubt, to persons of opinion and authority, our habits formed, our characters moulded in a pattern.”

— Daphne du Maurier

479. “It was unlike anything I had ever known. I had no feeling, no pain.”

— Daphne du Maurier

480. “The good monks are waiting upon eternity, they can wait a few more hours for you.”

— Daphne du Maurier

481. “But once a woman stole the initiative, plundered the perquisites and took the lead, what happened to the globe? The fabric cracked.”

— Daphne du Maurier

482. “Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of Aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.”

— Daphne du Maurier

483. “I don’t think there is any necessity to bring Inspector Welch into the affair – yet,” said Colonel Julyan. His voice was different, harsher. I did not like the way he used the word, “yet.” Why must he use it at all? I did not like it.”

— Daphne du Maurier

484. “What they had dreamed of, schemed for, accomplished, no longer mattered, it was all forgotten.”

— Daphne du Maurier

485. “I’d be no use in a town,” said Mary. “I’ve never known anything but this life by the river, and I don’t want to. Going into Helston is town enough for me. I’m best here, with the few chickens that’s left to us, and the green stuff in the garden, and the old pig, and a bit of a boat on the river. What would I do up to Bodmin with my Aunt Patience?”

— Daphne du Maurier

486. “Doctors he would not tolerate; he had always believed in treating himself, and now he had not even the energy to do this.”

— Daphne du Maurier

487. “The trouble is that goodness dies, and lies buried in the earth. Cleverness passes on and becomes degenerate.”

— Daphne du Maurier

488. “She put back the receiver and lifted it again. She asked for the number of Niall’s room at the theater. She went on ringing. And surely, she thought with sudden hopelessness and a new kind of dead despair, they can’t both be out and away, now at this minute in my life, when I need both of them so much? Surely one of them will come, surely one of them will help me? Because I don’t want to go home alone. I don’t want to be in the house alone, without Pappy.”

— Daphne du Maurier

489. “Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession anymore. It was something to be traded, bought, and sold. It fetched a high price, or a low one. It was kicked in the common market. Always, forever after, the possessor of the talent must keep a wary eye upon the purchaser. Therefore, if you were sensitive, if you were proud, you turned your back upon the market. You made excuses.”

— Daphne du Maurier

490. “It seemed to Jennifer that she had sat in the cellar from the beginning of things, that never, since she could remember, had there been anything in her life but this. One day, so she was told, it would be ended. One day there would be no war.”

— Daphne du Maurier

491. “To him, the drug released the complex brew within the brain that served up the savored past. To me, it proved that the past was living still, that we were all participants, all witnesses. I was Roger, I was Bodrugan, I was Cain; and in being so was more truly myself.”

— Daphne du Maurier

492. “You have never lived anywhere else,” he said, “and you are not an individual at all, you’re just a hotch-potch of every character you’ve ever acted. Your mood and your personality change with each new part that comes along. There is no such woman as Maria, there never has been. Even your children know it. And that’s why they are fascinated by you, for two days only, and then go running up to the nursery to Polly, because Polly is real, and genuine, and alive.”

— Daphne du Maurier

493. “If loving a man meant this pain and anguish and sickness, she wanted none of it. It did away with sanity and composure and made havoc of courage. She was a babbling child now when once she had been indifferent and strong.”

— Daphne du Maurier

494. “Never dance again?” said Niall. “But what would happen? What would everybody do?” “Nothing would happen,” she said. “The theater is a funny world, you know. They forget one very soon.”

— Daphne du Maurier

495. “The world we carry inside us produces answers, sometimes. A way of escape. A flight from reality.”

— Daphne du Maurier

496. “I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten.”

— Daphne du Maurier

497. “And looking north, inland from the Gribben, I could just make out the grey roof of a house there, set in its own grounds amongst trees. Yes, Angela and I were told. That would be Menabilly. Belongs to Dr Rashleigh, but he seldom lives there.”

— Daphne du Maurier

498. “Impossible that they should live while I was no more a part of existence.”

— Daphne du Maurier

499. “Once there had been a path across the mountains, and restlessness, and an urge to fight, and a dream of many women, and now there was a home that was my home, and peace, and relaxation, and no dreams but the reality of one woman. I did not know if it was I who had changed, or the world that had changed about me, but so it was, and I could not call back the dreams that had gone from me.”

— Daphne du Maurier

500. “I thought at first somebody was dead, but after a while I saw it was just England.”

— Daphne du Maurier