Top 380 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2023 Update)
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51. “The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.”

— Daphne du Maurier

52. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

54. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

56. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

58. “All autobiography is self-indulgent.”

— Daphne du Maurier

59. “People who mattered could not take the humdrum world. But this was not the world, it was enchantment; and all of it was mine.”

— Daphne du Maurier

60. “Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession any more. 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.”

— Daphne du Maurier

61. “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

62. “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

63. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

65. “Poor whims of fancy, tender and unharsh. They are the enemy to bitterness and regret, and sweeten this exile we have brought upon ourselves.”

— Daphne du Maurier

66. “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

67. “I wonder what my life would be today, if Mrs. Van Hopper had not been a snob.”

— Daphne du Maurier

68. “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

69. “The terrace sloped to the lawns, and the lawns stretched to the sea, and turning I could see the sheet of silver placid under the moon, like a lake undisturbed by wind or storm. No waves would come to ruffle this dream water, and no bulk of cloud, wind-driven from the west, obscure the clarity of this pale sky.”

— Daphne du Maurier

70. “She’s got the three things that matter in a wife,’ she told me: ’breeding, brains, and beauty.”

— Daphne du Maurier

71. “Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind. Of course we have our moments of depression, but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity and... I know we are together, we march in unison, no clash of thought or of opinion makes a barrier between us.”

— Daphne du Maurier

72. “There was something strangely peaceful about the house, something very rare and difficult to define. It was like a house in an old tale, discovered by the hero one evening in midsummer. In the tale there would be strands of ivy clustering the walls, and barring the entrance and the house itself would have slept for a thousand years.”

— Daphne du Maurier

73. “We all of us have our particular devil who ruses us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.”

— Daphne du Maurier

74. “We were dreamers, both of us, unpractical, reserved, full of great theories never put to test, and, like all dreamers, asleep to the waking world. Disliking our fellow men, we craved affection; but shyness kept impulse dormant until the heart was touched.”

— Daphne du Maurier

75. “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

76. “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

77. “Marriage and piracy do not go together.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

79. “I believed, in her strange way, that she had loved us both, but we had become dispensable. Something other than blind emotion directed her actions after all. Perhaps she was two persons, torn in two, first one having sway and then the other.”

— Daphne du Maurier

80. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

82. “This was a woman’s room, graceful, fragile, the room of someone who had chosen every particle of furniture with great care, so that each chair, each vase, each small, infinitesimal thing should be in harmony with one another, and with her own personality.”

— Daphne du Maurier

83. “As soon as his laughter died away the smile faded from Aunt Patience’s face, and the strained, haunted expression returned again, the fixed, almost idiot stare that she wore habitually in the presence of her husband. Mary saw at once that the little freedom from care which her aunt had enjoyed during the past week was now no more, and she had again become the nervy, shattered creature of before.”

— Daphne du Maurier

84. “She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment.”

— Daphne du Maurier

85. “For I had no illusions left now, I no longer made any effort to pretend. Last night had shown me too well. My marriage was a failure. All the things that people would say about it if they knew, were true. We did not get on. We were not companions. We were not suited to one another. I was too young for Maxim, too inexperienced, and, more important still, I was not of his world.”

— Daphne du Maurier

86. “They were ageless, they were sexless, they were neither male nor female, old or young, but the beauty of their faces, and of their bodies too, was more stirring and exciting than anything I had ever seen or known, and with a sudden longing I wanted to be one of them, to be dressed as they were dressed, to love as they must love, to laugh and worship and be silent.”

— Daphne du Maurier

87. “He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this. – from a Difference in Temperament.”

— Daphne du Maurier

88. “I had so identified myself with Rebecca that my own dull self did not exist, had never come to Manderley. I had gone back in thought and in person to the days that were gone.”

— Daphne du Maurier

89. “We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us.”

— Daphne du Maurier

90. “I had left the land of fantasy, to her to enter into it. Two persons therefore could not share a dream. Except in darkness, as in make-believe. Each figure, then, a phantom.”

— Daphne du Maurier

91. “When people suffer a great shock, like death, or the loss of a limb, I believe they don’t feel it just at first. If your hand is taken from you you don’t know, for a few minutes, that your hand is gone. You go on feeling the fingers.”

— Daphne du Maurier

92. “The visitors sat down, languid, and content to rest. Seecombe brought cake and wine.”

— Daphne du Maurier

93. “She had contemplated life so long it had become indifferent to her.”

— Daphne du Maurier

94. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

96. “The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.”

— Daphne du Maurier

97. “She sat with her chin cupped in her hands, her eyes fixed on the window splashed with mud and rain, hoping with a sort of desperate interest that some ray of light would break the heavy blanket of sky, and but a momentary trace of that lost blue heaven that had mantled Helford yesterday shine for an instant as a forerunner of fortune.”

— Daphne du Maurier

98. “She had the cold, angry face that spelled trouble, the face that sent servants flying, stage managers running for their lives, and ourselves to whatever distant room we might possess.”

— Daphne du Maurier

99. “No lives have been lost as yet, and none of our women have been taken,” said Godolphin stiffly, “but as the fellow is a Frenchman we all realize that it is only a question of time before something dastardly occurs.”

— Daphne du Maurier

100. “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