Top 500 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “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

452. “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

453. “Then all at once she turned to me, her face pale, her eyes strangely alight. She said, “Is it possible to love someone so much, that it gives one a pleasure to hurt them? To hurt them by jealousy, I mean, and to hurt myself at the same time. Pleasure and pain, an equal mingling of pleasure and pain, just as an experiment, a rare sensation?”

— Daphne du Maurier

454. “What trail of thought, confused and indirect, drove through those minds of theirs, to cloud their judgement? What waves of impulse swept about their being, moving them to anger and withdrawal, or else to sudden generosity? We were surely different, with our blunter comprehension, moving more slowly to the compass points, while they, erratic and unstable, were blown about their course by winds of fancy.”

— Daphne du Maurier

455. “I had not realised until then that grown-up people could be unhappy, that they could cry. I did not want to think about it.”

— Daphne du Maurier

456. “But ‘I read also’ intensified, then and during the following year, with a lot of Scott, a lot of Thackeray, and R. L. Stevenson never far away.”

— Daphne du Maurier

457. “Charles was nowhere to be seen. Maria had to go to look for him. Celia’s anxiety mounted. Pappy would never hang on until after six. He was like a baby with a bottle. He had to keep to his regular time for his whiskey or his whole system became disorganized.”

— Daphne du Maurier

458. “He had been dedicated to science since his first birthday, and Louis-Mathurin would hear of no other career for his eldest son. Kicky was seventeen on the sixth of March, and did not look much like a prospective scientist.”

— Daphne du Maurier

459. “I did not know what to answer, because it would be too sudden and too direct, but I knew in my heart that what I wanted was everything that could be between a woman and a man; not at first, of course, but later, when we had found our other mountain, or our wilderness, or wherever it was we might go to hide ourselves from the world. There was no need to rehearse all that now. The point was that I was prepared to follow her anywhere if she would let me.”

— Daphne du Maurier

460. “Niall never really knew which; but he used to lie in bed until she returned in the middle of the day, and he read every one of the works of Maupassant, the book in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other.”

— Daphne du Maurier

461. “At twenty-six she had held her little world between her ruthless, exquisite fingers, and here was her grandson, at the same age, launching himself into the problematical future, in which he was to win fame by satirising the same society she had led by the ears at the beginning of the century.”

— Daphne du Maurier

462. “Meantime, the Declaration of the Rights of Man made all men equal, if it did not make them brothers, and within a week of its passing into law there were riots in Le Mans, and disturbances in Paris too, with the price of bread as high as it had been before, and unemployment rife. Bakers were blamed in every city for charging too dearly for their four-pound loaf, and they in turn put the blame upon the grain merchants; all men were at fault save those who leveled the accusations.”

— Daphne du Maurier

463. “Charles said, “I haven’t looked at the Acrostic. A word of nine letters in the crossword caught my attention.” “Oh, what was that?” “An invertebrate animal preying upon the body of another animal.” Niall struck the first chord on the piano. “A parasite,” he said.”

— Daphne du Maurier

464. “But he was quite eclipsed by one of the deputies of the Third Estate, a young lawyer called Robespierre – I wonder if Pierre has heard of him? – who suggested that the Archbishop would do better if he told his fellow clergy to join forces with the patriots who were friends to the people, and that if they wanted to help they might set an example by giving up some of their own luxurious way of living, and returning to the simple ways of the founder of their faith.”

— Daphne du Maurier

465. “Heaven he would never achieve, and the hell that he had known was lost to him.”

— Daphne du Maurier

466. “Whether he talked or not made little difference to my mood. My only enemy was the clock on the dash-board, whose hands would move relentlessly to one o’clock.”

— Daphne du Maurier

467. “I am sorry, Ellen; but I have always been plain-spoken, as you know. Living quietly as you do, you should manage very well on your allowance. But when it comes to supporting your husband as well, that is another matter. However, do not let us talk of it again. It is embarrassing to both of us. If you are ever in want, my dear, write privately to me.”

— Daphne du Maurier

468. “Now that the Duke of York was dead it was an ideal opportunity to break her contract. The book would have a tremendous sale in London, the publisher had intimated; everyone would talk about it, and her portrait would be published in the papers, and all the old notoriety, which, truth to tell, she had missed sadly during the years of retirement, would be hers again.”

— Daphne du Maurier

469. “He argued the course of direction during the full seventy miles of the drive. The fact that his map was eighteenth century did not fluster him.”

— Daphne du Maurier

470. “She laughed because she must, and because he made her;.”

— Daphne du Maurier

471. “He was my secret property. Preserved for me alone...”

— Daphne du Maurier

472. “The art of provocation was unknown to me, and I would sit with his map upon my lap, the wind blowing my dull, lanky hair, happy in his silence yet eager for his words.”

— Daphne du Maurier

473. “Her uncle had ridden away on the moors somewhere, and a sense of freedom possessed her whenever he was gone.”

— Daphne du Maurier

474. “I will tell you how I sought refuge from myself in Christianity and found it to be built upon hatred and jealousy, and greed – all the man-made attributes of civilization, while the old pagan barbarism was naked and clean.”

— Daphne du Maurier

475. “It was some personal friend of the landlord’s, who had no wish to meddle in his evening’s business, and would not show himself even to the landlord’s wife.”

— Daphne du Maurier

476. “I scanned the criticisms of recent books to see if there were any that resembled mine. I resented them all; it seemed to me too many people wrote in England, too many people had ideas.”

— Daphne du Maurier

477. “It seemed strange that life must go on without our need for it.”

— Daphne du Maurier

478. “I would forget my own beating heart, my own trembling body, my own sense of inexpiable degradation. I got up and started to throw off my things. Then the door opened and Jake came into the cabin. I did not want to look at him at first. I turned my back and fumbled with the tap of the basin. He did not say anything either. I whistled a tune under my breath. I wished he had been drunk, or laughing, or cursing, or in some way dragging himself down to my level.”

— Daphne du Maurier

479. “The great man made all sorts of tests with mysterious instruments, and finally told him there was very little wrong, merely a congestion of the retina, and gave him some drops for use every night and morning, and told him to go away for a few weeks to the sea, and he would be well by the end of the month.”

— Daphne du Maurier

480. “The thing had been a tragedy, but tragedies become less poignant as the months pass.”

— Daphne du Maurier

481. “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

482. “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

483. “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

484. “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

485. “No.” Monsieur Ledru mused, as though he had but half heard. Then with a start: “Oh, but most certainly not. No, it is rather a heaviness upon the mind – a weight as of lead upon brain and thoughts, while my legs are like paper under me.” Lifting his hat he passed a thin hand over his forehead. “It is such as when one cannot recall a name and goes under a burden until memory releases it.”

— Daphne du Maurier

486. “Richard turned and saw me. And as he looked at me it was as if my whole heart moved over in my body and was mine no longer.”

— Daphne du Maurier

487. “You have only to look at his eyes. He’s still in hell...”

— Daphne du Maurier

488. “I am probably a dull man. Emotionally I have had no complications. I was engaged to a pretty girl, a neighbor, when I was twenty-five, but she married somebody else. It hurt at the time, but the wound healed in less than a year. One fault, if fault it is, I have always had, which perhaps accounts for my hitherto monotonous life. This is an aversion to becoming involved with people. Friends I possess, but at a distance. Once involved, trouble occurs, and too often disaster follows.”

— Daphne du Maurier

489. “She is like a child playing at houses,” whispered my mother. “What I ask myself is this – where will it all end?”

— Daphne du Maurier

490. “I do lie about,” she said, “from time to time. The trouble is I go off everyone so quickly. I soon get bored.” “Bored with the things they say? Or with the things they do?” “With the things they do. I never listen to the things they say.”

— Daphne du Maurier

491. “The only timid one of the trio was the nameless heroine in Rebecca, and she found strength of purpose when she discovered that her husband Maxim truly loved her, and had never cared for his first wife Rebecca.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

493. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

495. “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

496. “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

497. “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

498. “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

499. “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

500. “It is strange how in moments of great crisis the mind whips back to childhood.”

— Daphne du Maurier