Top 500 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?”

— Daphne du Maurier

52. “We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.”

— Daphne du Maurier

53. “This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.”

— Daphne du Maurier

54. “We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. 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

55. “I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.”

— Daphne du Maurier

56. “It wouldn’t make for sanity would it, living with the devil.”

— Daphne du Maurier

57. “No, Mary had no illusions about romance. Falling in love was a pretty name for it, that was all.”

— Daphne du Maurier

Featured in: Romance Quotes

58. “Time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real.”

— Daphne du Maurier

59. “All whispers and echoes from a past that is gone teem into the sleeper’s brain, and he is with them, and part of them.”

— Daphne du Maurier

60. “So you see, when war comes to one’s village, one’s doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred. That is why I am not a great patriot.”

— Daphne du Maurier

61. “The trouble is, walking in Venice becomes compulsive once you start. Just over the next bridge, you say, and then the next one beckons.”

— Daphne du Maurier

62. “People who travel are always fugitives.”

— Daphne du Maurier

63. “The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.”

— Daphne du Maurier

64. “Nothing like a cup of tea to make a person feel better, man or woman.”

— Daphne du Maurier

65. “How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.”

— Daphne du Maurier

66. “She knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live.”

— Daphne du Maurier

67. “If there’s one thing that makes a man sick, it’s to have his ale poured out of an ugly hand.”

— Daphne du Maurier

68. “All autobiography is self-indulgent.”

— Daphne du Maurier

69. “It was not chance that brought us together again. I am sure of that. These things are predestined. I have a theory that each man’s life is like a pack of cards, and those we meet and sometimes love are shuffled with us. We find ourselves in the same suit, held by the hand of Fate. The game is played, we are discarded, and pass on.”

— Daphne du Maurier

70. “Living as we do in an age of noise and bluster, success is now measured accordingly. We must all be seen, and heard, and on the air.”

— Daphne du Maurier

71. “Non ramentare che le ore felici.”

— Daphne du Maurier

72. “A familiar name on its own, however, does not carry its bearer far unless the talent is there, and the will to work.”

— Daphne du Maurier

73. “I felt rather exhausted, and wondered, rather shocked at my callous thought, why old people were sometimes such a strain. Worse than young children or puppies because one had to be polite.”

— Daphne du Maurier

74. “Watch that boy. He’s going to startle somebody someday.”

— Daphne du Maurier

75. “He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. He still thought about Rebecca. He would never love me because of Rebecca. She was in the house still, as Mrs Danvers had said; she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning-room, in the gallery above the hall.”

— Daphne du Maurier

76. “She had not understood. She belonged to another breed of men and women, another race than I. They had guts, the women of her race. They were not like me. If it had been Beatrice who had done this thing instead of me she would have put on her other dress and gone down again to welcome her guests. She would have stood by Giles’s side, and shaken hands with people, a smile on her face. I could not do that. I had not the pride, I had not the guts. I was badly bred.”

— Daphne du Maurier

77. “I could fight the living but I could not fight the dead.”

— Daphne du Maurier

78. “I do love you,” I said. “I love you dreadfully. You’ve made me very unhappy and I’ve been crying all night because I thought I should never see you again.”

— Daphne du Maurier

79. “If it must be so, let’s not weep nor complain If I have failed, or you, or life turned sullen. We have had these things, they do not come again, But the flag still flies and the city has not fallen.” Humbert Wolfe.”

— Daphne du Maurier

80. “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me.”

— Daphne du Maurier

81. “A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners.”

— Daphne du Maurier

82. “A denial heralded the thrice crowing of a cock, and an insincerity was like the kiss of Judas.”

— Daphne du Maurier

83. “She wondered if this was how a ship felt when the security of harbor was left behind. No vessel could feel more desolate than she did, not even if the wind thundered in the rigging and the sea licked her decks.”

— Daphne du Maurier

84. “I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty one. They are so full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.”

— Daphne du Maurier

85. “You have blotted out the past for me, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo.”

— Daphne du Maurier

86. “There was something rather blousy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair.”

— Daphne du Maurier

87. “I thought about being placid, how quiet and comfortable it sounded, someone with knitting on her lap, with calm unruffled brow. Someone who was never anxious, never tortured by doubt and indecision, someone who never stood as I did, hopeful, eager, frightened, tearing at bitten nails, uncertain which way to go, what star to follow.”

— Daphne du Maurier

88. “This was more than I had hitherto endured, even from her, but the swift lash of his reply was unexpected. “Not since Ethelred,” he said, “the one who was called Unready. In fact, it was while staying with my family that the name was given him. He was invariably late for dinner.”

— Daphne du Maurier

89. “Marat, in L’Ami du Peuple, declared that the only way to save the Revolution for the people was to slaughter the aristocrats en masse; yet if this happened the innocent might suffer with the guilty. Somehow, we no longer seemed to preach the brotherhood of man.”

— Daphne du Maurier

90. “He can’t get rid of me, he can’t shake himself clear. It has happened all my life, this business of clinging to people, of getting too fond of them.”

— Daphne du Maurier

91. “Tall and dark she was. She gave you the feeling of a snake. I seen her here with me own eyes. By night she’d come.”

— Daphne du Maurier

92. “It was very peaceful and quiet. I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say “By the way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She’s married, with two children.” And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me.”

— Daphne du Maurier

93. “You’ve taken me out of myself, out of despondency and introspection, both of which have been my devils for a year.”

— Daphne du Maurier

94. “She cared for nothing and for no one. And then she was beaten in the end. But it wasn’t a man, it wasn’t a woman. The sea got her. The sea was too strong for her. The sea got her in the end.”

— Daphne du Maurier

95. “Death should be different. It should be like bidding farewell to someone at a station before a long journey, but without the strain.”

— Daphne du Maurier

96. “The man looked at her curiously. “Jamaica Inn?” he said. “What would you be doing at Jamaica Inn? That’s no place for a girl. You must have made a mistake, surely.” He stared at her hard, not believing her.”

— Daphne du Maurier

97. “You have blotted out the past for me, you know, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo. But for you I should have left long ago, gone to Italy, and Greece, and further still perhaps. You have spared me all those wanderings.”

— Daphne du Maurier

98. “Resignation brings its own reward.”

— Daphne du Maurier

99. “With Rebecca we enter a world of dreams and daydreams, but they always threaten to tip over into nightmare.”

— Daphne du Maurier

100. “Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a dreamer’s fancy.”

— Daphne du Maurier