Top 500 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream...”

— Daphne du Maurier

252. “It seemed to Lady Althea, as she stood there above the steps, that all the people pressing forward were staring, not at the Dome of Rock, but at her alone, and were nudging on another, whispering, smiling; for she knew, from her own experience of mocking others, that there is nothing more likely to unite a crowd of strangers in a wave of laughter than the sight of someone who, with dignity shattered, becomes suddenly grotesque.”

— Daphne du Maurier

253. “I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people.”

— Daphne du Maurier

254. “It was as though there was some latent power in his fingers which turned them from bludgeons into deft and cunning servants. Had he cut her a chunk of bread and hurled it at her she would not have minded so much; it would have been in keeping with what she had seen of him. But this sudden coming to grace, this quick and exquisite moving of his hands, was a swift and rather sinister revelation, sinister because it was unexpected and not true to type. She thanked him quietly, and began to eat.”

— Daphne du Maurier

255. “Perhaps she had exaggerated; people very often were wrong about their relatives.”

— Daphne du Maurier

256. “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

257. “November 1929, and I was still pegging away at Part Three, with a lump on my third finger from holding my pen too tightly. A pity I didn’t own a typewriter.”

— Daphne du Maurier

258. “There was a garden at the back, a delight to the children, and a green gate in the wall that led to a private avenue, all tangled undergrowth and mystery. And away behind this was the Bois itself, the enchanted forest, stretching surely to eternity, thought the children; a paradise with no beginning and no end. It was these years in Passy, between 1842 and 1847, that Kicky was to describe nearly fifty years later in Peter Ibbetson.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

260. “I am considered silly, selfish and incredible by all concerned. No use in explaining. I prefer to live happily in discomfort here in beloved Fowey to living comfortably, query, and discontentedly in indifferent Hampstead. That’s all. I’m used to being alone. Why fuss? Why struggle? It’s funny that no one seems really to understand my craving for solitude, that I am sincerely, and without posing, happiest when alone. It’s my natural state.”

— Daphne du Maurier

261. “Harder, Max, harder,’ she would say, laughing up at him, and he would do as she told him.”

— Daphne du Maurier

262. “What a time you’ve been. You can’t afford to dream this morning, you know, there’s too much to be done.”

— Daphne du Maurier

263. “There was no yesterday and no tomorrow; fear had been slung aside, and shame forgotten. We were all together – Pappy and Mama; Maria and Niall and Celia – we were all happy, with so many people looking at us, we were all enjoying ourselves. It was a game that we played, a game that we understood. We were the Delaneys. And we were giving a party.”

— Daphne du Maurier

264. “He took her face in his hands and kissed it, and she saw that he was laughing. “When you’re an old maid in mittens down at Helford, you’ll remember that,” he said, “and it will have to last you to the end of your days. ‘He stole horses,’ you’ll say to yourself, ’and he didn’t care for women; and but for my pride I’d have been with him now.”

— Daphne du Maurier

265. “The system might one day change, but human nature remained the same, and there were always people who profited at the expense of others.”

— Daphne du Maurier

266. “No, it was done with and finished. Escape was a thing of yesterday.”

— Daphne du Maurier

267. “Soon we won’t be children anymore. We shall be like Them.”

— Daphne du Maurier

268. “If I possessed the world, you should have it also.”

— Daphne du Maurier

269. “Giles and I think it much more likely that if those holes weren’t done by the rocks they were done deliberately, by some tramp or other. A Communist perhaps. There are heaps of them about. Just the sort of thing a Communist would do.”

— Daphne du Maurier

270. “I had become like a prisoner in chains, and the dungeon was deep.”

— Daphne du Maurier

271. “It seemed strange that things could still be done to me after I was dead, that my body would perhaps be found and handled by people I should never know, that really a little life would go on about me which I should never feel.”

— Daphne du Maurier

272. “Sometimes it’s a sort of indulgence to think the worst of ourselves. We say, ‘Now I have reached the bottom of the pit, now I can fall no further,’ and it is almost a pleasure to wallow in the darkness. The trouble is, it’s not true. There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good. It’s a matter of choice. We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we’re going.”

— Daphne du Maurier

273. “At twenty-three it takes very little to make the spirits soar.”

— Daphne du Maurier

274. “Fashions change so quickly nowadays they may even have altered by the time you get upstairs.”

— Daphne du Maurier

275. “The proprietor bowed, and walked with him to the entrance. ‘In Venice the whole world meets,’ he said smiling. ‘It is possible the signore will find his friends tonight. Arrivederci, signore.”

— Daphne du Maurier

276. “You could stoop down and pick a fallen petal, crush it between your fingers, and you had there, in the hollow of your hand, the essence of a thousand scents, unbearable and sweet.”

— Daphne du Maurier

277. “He laughed and shook his head. “I think you’re incorrigible.” “Good God, I hope so. Otherwise why live?”

— Daphne du Maurier

278. “Jamaica Inn stands today, hospitable and kindly, a temperance house on the twenty-mile road between Bodmin and Launceston. In the following story of adventure I have pictured it as it might have been over a hundred and twenty years ago; and although existing place-names figure in the pages, the characters and events described are entirely imaginary. Daphne du Maurier Bodinnick-by-Fowey October 1935.”

— Daphne du Maurier

279. “The glass world was unique, a law unto itself. It had its own rules and customs, and a separate language too, handed down not only from father to son but from master to apprentice, instituted heaven knows how many centuries ago wherever the glass-makers settled – in Normandy, in Lorraine, by the Loire – but always, naturally, by forests, for wood was the glass foundry’s food, the mainstay of its existence.”

— Daphne du Maurier

280. “I’ll not show fear before Joss Merlyn or any man,” she said, “and, to prove it, I will go down now, in the dark passage, and take a look at them in the bar, and if he kills me it will be my own fault.”

— Daphne du Maurier

281. “If the flower of my generation had not been blown to bits in the war they would have brought it back again. Now it’s too late. So few of us are left.” The bride at St. George’s.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

283. “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

284. “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

285. “I had the clean new feeling that one has when the calendar is hung on the wall at the beginning of the year. January the 1st.”

— Daphne du Maurier

286. “How many minute, invisible, intangible threads go to the making of a single human being, and what a strange jumble of hereditary impulses must have been this young Kicky and young Gyggy.”

— Daphne du Maurier

287. “This time the man confessed that there was slight detachment of the retina, and that Kicky must give up all thought of working for several months, and devote himself to the cure. He must have treatment at least once a week, continue with the ordinary bathing and poulticing at home, and put himself on a diet. He must, in fact, resign himself to being more or less of an invalid for the immediate future.”

— Daphne du Maurier

288. “Mary wondered how many years Aunt Patience had kept that knowledge to herself in an agony of silence. No one would ever know how greatly she had suffered. Wherever she should go in the future, the pain of that knowledge would go with her. It could never leave her alone.”

— Daphne du Maurier

289. “When anyone talked about beauty in that way I knew they were doing it for effect. Perhaps she wanted me to think she was intelligent. She had only to open her mouth to show me she was not.”

— Daphne du Maurier

290. “It embarrassed her, as a child, to think that her father had fallen in love, or, if men must love, then it should have been someone else, someone dark, mysterious and profoundly clever, not an ordinary person who was impatient for no reason and cross when one was late for lunch.”

— Daphne du Maurier

291. “You ought to take more exercise, if you’re inclined to have a liver. Play golf.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

294. “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

295. “I know that age, it’s a particularly obstinate one, and a thousand bogies won’t make you fear the future. A pity we can’t change over.”

— Daphne du Maurier

296. “This, I think, was the essence of what it meant to me. To be bound, yet free; to be alone, yet in their company; to be born in my own time yet living, unknown, in theirs.”

— Daphne du Maurier

297. “It was really very lucky for Kicky and Gyggy and little Isabella, and all the future generations; that their kind grandmamma had succeeded so well in her profession that she was able to live in honourable retirement and keep them all clothed and fed. But for her generosity, and the allowance she paid her daughter, the Busson du Mauriers would have fared very ill indeed. It is even doubtful whether they would have survived at all.”

— Daphne du Maurier

298. “Sir,’ or whatever one does say to God, ‘here I am, Maria, and I am the lowest form of life,’ that would be honest. And honesty counts for something, doesn’t it?” “One doesn’t know,” said Niall. “That’s the frightful thing. One just does not know what goes down well with God. He may think honesty is a form of bragging.” “In that case I’m sunk,” said Maria. “I think you’re sunk, anyway,” said Niall.”

— Daphne du Maurier

299. “The world we carry inside us produces answers, sometimes. A way of escape. A flight from reality. You didn’t want to live either in London or New York. The fourteenth century made an exciting, if someone gruesome, antidote to both. The trouble is that daydreams, like hallucinogenic drugs, become addictive; the more we indulge, the deeper we plunge, and then, as I said before, we end in the loony-bin.”

— Daphne du Maurier

300. “Original proposals were much better. More genuine. Not like other people. Not like younger men who talked non sense probably not meaning half they said. Not like younger men being very incoherent, very passionate, swearing impossibilities.”

— Daphne du Maurier