Top 500 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Happy in his silence yet eager for his words.”

— Daphne du Maurier

202. “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

203. “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

204. “I wrote on the birthday itself, ’and as for being twenty-one, I’ll leave it at that. I can’t see that years make any difference, or days, or hours, it’s things that happen to one that matter. I shan’t look back. No guttering candles and dripping wicks for me. When I go let me go quickly, still a bright flame, no flickering! Meanwhile Adams and I celebrated my majority by taking Annabelle Lee out to sea and catching 13 pollock, which was a good start for the boat.”

— Daphne du Maurier

205. “Three years of marriage,” he said, “and the dishwasher means more to your conjugal life than the double bed I’m throwing in for good measure. I warned you it wouldn’t last. The marriage, I mean, not the bed.”

— Daphne du Maurier

206. “The spaniel came up to me, sniffing at my legs, and I bent down and stroked his ears. “Well, Micky,” I said, “you surely remember me? Poor old Micky, good old Micky.” “Micky has got very fat,” said my mother. “Yes,” I said. “Micky is fond of his food,” said Grey. There was another pause and I went on stroking the spaniel’s ears.”

— Daphne du Maurier

207. “Jim was no more interested than Mrs. Trigg had been. It was, Nat thought, like air raids in the war. No one down this end of the country knew what the Plymouth folk had seen and suffered. You had to endure something yourself before it touched you.”

— Daphne du Maurier

208. “I don’t want to love like a woman or feel like a woman, Mr Davey; there’s pain that way, and suffering, and misery that can last a lifetime. I didn’t bargain for this; I don’t want it.”

— Daphne du Maurier

209. “No, and no again,” he said. “I tell you for the final time, I’ll not be a party to it. I’ll break with you now and forever, and put an end to the agreement. That’s murder you’d have me do, Mr. Merlyn; there’s no other name for it – it’s common murder.”

— Daphne du Maurier

210. “So death, Shelagh decided, was a moment for compliments, for everyone saying polite things about everybody else which they would not dream of saying at another time.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

212. “It’s true his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.”

— Daphne du Maurier

213. “We don’t need vows, you and I’, he said, ’nor gold nor metal. What we are to each other lasts to the grave and beyond.”

— Daphne du Maurier

214. “Your father,” I answered him, “has enough work on his hands without keeping house for a crippled woman.”

— Daphne du Maurier

215. “What a funny thing to do,” said the grandmother. “I don’t think much of books for a wedding-present. Nobody ever gave me any books when I was married. I should never have read them if they had.”

— Daphne du Maurier

216. “Sorrow for the men that mourn, Sorrow for the days that dawn, Sorrow for all things born Into this world of sorrow. And all my life, as far as I can see, All that I hope, or ever hope to be, Is merely driftwood on a lonely sea.”

— Daphne du Maurier

217. “I love the stillness of a room, after a party. The chairs are moved, the cushions disarranged, everything is there to show that people enjoyed themselves; and one comes back to the empty room happy that it’s over, happy to relax and say, ‘Now we are alone again.”

— Daphne du Maurier

218. “What is the truth?” I asked, in renewed agony of doubt – for had I, after all, done wrong in leaving my husband to his possible fate at le Chesne-Bidault? Were hordes of brigands even now setting fire to my home and everything I held dear? “The truth?” repeated Robert. “Nobody ever knows the truth in this world.”

— Daphne du Maurier

219. “I love the stillness of a room after a party. The chairs are moved, the cushions disarranged, everything is there to show that people enjoyed themselves; and one comes back to the empty room happy that it’s over, happy to relax and say, ‘Now we are alone again.’ Ambrose used to say to me in Florence that it was worth the tedium of visitors to experience the pleasure of their going. He was so right.”

— Daphne du Maurier

220. “I know I cried that night, bitter youthful tears that could not come from me today. That kind of crying, deep into a pillow, does not happen after we are twenty-one. The throbbing head, the swollen eyes, the tight, contracted throat. And the wild anxiety in the morning to hide all traces from the world, sponging with cold water, dabbing eau-de-Cologne, the furtive dash of powder that is significant in itself.”

— Daphne du Maurier

221. “I was reminded of my first journey as a child in France, traveling by sleeper overnight, throwing open the carriage window in the morning to see foreign fields fly by, villages, towns, figures laboring the land humped like the plowman now, and thinking, with childish wonder, “Are they alive like me, or just pretending?”

— Daphne du Maurier

222. “Could time be all-dimensional – yesterday, today, tomorrow running concurrently in ceaseless repetition? Perhaps.”

— Daphne du Maurier

223. “The people don’t want to be understood, it would spoil their sense of injustice. They revel in their wrongs.”

— Daphne du Maurier

224. “I glanced out of the window, and it was like turning the page of a photograph album. Those roof-tops and that sea were mine no more. They belonged to yesterday, to the past.”

— Daphne du Maurier

225. “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

226. “On the table there, polished now and plain, an ugly case would stand containing butterflies and moths, and another one with bird’s eggs wrapped in cotton wool. “Not all this junk in here,” I would say, “take them to the schoolroom darlings,” and they would run off, shouting, calling to one another, but the little one staying behind, pottering on his own, quieter than the others.”

— Daphne du Maurier

227. “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

228. “There was no other sound except the husky wheezing of the clock in the hall and the sudden whirring note preparatory to the strike. It rang the hour – three o’clock – and then ticked on, choking and gasping like a dying man who cannot catch his breath.”

— Daphne du Maurier

229. “Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best as I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can, with that same breath, shatter and destroy it. If what I write displeases you, it will not matter. Throw my letters in the fire unread, and keep your illusions. For myself, I have always preferred to know the truth.”

— Daphne du Maurier

230. “In the animal kingdom a freak was a thing of abhorrence, at once hunted and destroyed, or driven out into the wilderness.”

— Daphne du Maurier

231. “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

232. “The smell of coffee, white dust, tobacco and burnt bread, flowers with a fragrance of wine, and the crimson fruit, soft and overripe. A girl looking over her bare shoulder, with a flash of a smile, gold ear-rings showing from thick black hair brushed away from her face, long arms, a cigarette between her lips. Night like a great dark blanket, voices murmuring at a street corner, the air warm with tired flowers, and a hum from the sea.”

— Daphne du Maurier

233. “I am notorious,” said Dona, “for making unfortunate remarks.”

— Daphne du Maurier

234. “Yes, of course it was kind, but why must I be reminded of the fact, and would I ever write enough short stories to sell, and so make some money that would be mine, all mine, so that I could pay the cook and buy my own food, and keep myself and be truly independent? It just had to happen. I refused to be beaten.”

— Daphne du Maurier

235. “It’s natural, I suppose,” said Colonel Julyan, “for all of us to wish to look different. We are all children in some ways.”

— Daphne du Maurier

236. “I don’t know what stuff her gowns were made of, whether of stiff silk, or satin, or brocade, but they seemed to sweep the floor, and lift, and sweep again and whether it was the gown itself that floated, or she wearing it and moving forward with such grace, but the library, that had seemed dark and austere before she entered, would be suddenly alive.”

— Daphne du Maurier

237. “He did not notice, every day, as I did, the blind gaze of the old dog in its basket in the library, who lifted its head when it heard my footstep, the footstep of a woman, and sniffing the air drooped its head again, because I was not the one she sought.”

— Daphne du Maurier

238. “Aunt Patience, you’re talking nonsense. What is the use of an inn that cannot give an honest traveler a bed for the night? For what other purpose was it built? And how do you live, if you have no custom?”

— Daphne du Maurier

239. “I thought to find it in the Christian Church, but the dogma sickened me, and the whole foundation is built upon a fairy-tale. Christ Himself is a figurehead, a puppet thing created by man himself.”

— Daphne du Maurier

240. “A master glass-maker must accustom himself to moving on. In old days they had always been wanderers, going from one forest to another, settling for a few years only.”

— Daphne du Maurier

241. “However grim and hateful was this new country, however barren and untilled, with Jamaica Inn standing alone upon the hill as a buffer to the four winds, there was a challenge in the air that spurred Mary Yellan to adventure. It stung her, bringing color to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes; it played with her hair, blowing it about her face; and as she breathed deep she drew it through her nostrils and into her lungs, more quenching and sweeter than a draft of cider.”

— Daphne du Maurier

242. “The house was large, redbricked, and gabled. Late Victorian I supposed. Not an attractive house. I could tell in a glance it was the sort of house that was aggressively well-kept by a big staff. And all for one old lady who was nearly blind.”

— Daphne du Maurier

243. “You forget, those things were easy for me. I belonged to both of them.” Niall pushed his cup back on the tray. “What a bloody thing to say,” he said, and he got up and lit another cigarette.”

— Daphne du Maurier

244. “Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered.”

— Daphne du Maurier

245. “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

246. “The relief was tremendous. I did not feel sick anymore. The pain had gone... I had no idea I was so empty.”

— Daphne du Maurier

247. “They say death does this to us once we are warned. Unconsciously, we strive not to waste time. Pettiness falls away, with all those things of little value in our lives. Could we but have known sooner, we tell ourselves, it would have been otherwise; no anger, no destruction, above everything no pride.”

— Daphne du Maurier

248. “But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood.”

— Daphne du Maurier

249. “She had grown older in four days, and the face that looked back at her from the spotted, cracked mirror was drawn and tired. There were dark rings beneath her eyes, and little hollows in her cheeks. Sleep came late to her at night, and she had no appetite for food. For the first time in her life she saw a resemblance between herself and her Aunt Patience.”

— Daphne du Maurier

250. “As an eavesdropper in time my role was passive, without commitment or responsibility. I could move about in their world unwatched, knowing that whatever happened I could do nothing to prevent it – comedy, tragedy, or farce – whereas in my twentieth century existence I must take my share in shaping my own future and that of my family.”

— Daphne du Maurier