Top 500 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “In 1994, Flavia published a biography of her mother, picking up the story where Myself When Young leaves off – the marriage to Tommy Browning and subsequent family life. The biography concludes with a celebration of the scattering of her mother’s ashes over the Cornish cliffs, and a belief that she has joined her dead husband in a boat sailing them into infinity.”

— Daphne du Maurier

302. “Friendship and duty are two separate things,” he said, “and I put duty first. You are another generation, you wouldn’t understand.”

— Daphne du Maurier

303. “Children’s tears are very near the surface, and come at the first crisis.”

— Daphne du Maurier

304. “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

305. “In November, Foy Quiller-Couch and I went on another riding expedition, this time to Bodmin moors, putting up at the wayside hostelry, Jamaica Inn.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

312. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

314. “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

315. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

317. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

319. “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

320. “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

321. “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

322. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

326. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

328. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

331. “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

332. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

334. “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

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

339. “The only time I got into trouble was when I forged M’s signature on the weekly report we had to take home every Friday and take back to school again signed by one of our parents. The reason I did so was that M happened to be out at the time and I thought I could save myself trouble.”

— Daphne du Maurier

340. “It was unlike anything I had ever known. I had no feeling, no pain.”

— Daphne du Maurier

341. “But once a woman stole the initiative, plundered the perquisites and took the lead, what happened to the globe? The fabric cracked.”

— Daphne du Maurier

342. “I’d be no use in a town,” said Mary. “I’ve never known anything but this life by the river, and I don’t want to. Going into Helston is town enough for me. I’m best here, with the few chickens that’s left to us, and the green stuff in the garden, and the old pig, and a bit of a boat on the river. What would I do up to Bodmin with my Aunt Patience?”

— Daphne du Maurier

343. “She put back the receiver and lifted it again. She asked for the number of Niall’s room at the theater. She went on ringing. And surely, she thought with sudden hopelessness and a new kind of dead despair, they can’t both be out and away, now at this minute in my life, when I need both of them so much? Surely one of them will come, surely one of them will help me? Because I don’t want to go home alone. I don’t want to be in the house alone, without Pappy.”

— Daphne du Maurier

344. “It seemed to Jennifer that she had sat in the cellar from the beginning of things, that never, since she could remember, had there been anything in her life but this. One day, so she was told, it would be ended. One day there would be no war.”

— Daphne du Maurier

345. “The restlessness has gone, the indecision and also the great heights of exultation, the strange depths of desolation. I am secure now, and certain of myself. There is peace and contentment.”

— Daphne du Maurier

346. “But the point is this, monsieur,” explained the patron, “the reason why madame complains of you, is not because of the immorality in itself; but because, so she tells me, you make immorality delicious.”

— Daphne du Maurier

347. “But the people enjoy watching the dog,” he said swiftly, trying to divert Charles. “That’s why they go to the circus, for distraction. Maria supplies the same drug in the theater, and I give it in large doses to all the errand-boys who whistle my songs. I think you’ve got hold of the wrong word. We’re pedlars, hawking our wares – not parasites.”

— Daphne du Maurier

348. “We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday’s films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls.”

— Daphne du Maurier

349. “People always gossiped about us, even as children. We created a strange sort of hostility wherever we went. In those days, during and after the First World War, when other children were well-mannered and conventional, we were ill-disciplined and wild. Those dreadful Delaneys.”

— Daphne du Maurier

350. “Mary shook her head. ‘I’ve only seen the evil,’ she said; ‘I’ve only seen the suffering there’s been, and the cruelty, and the pain. When my uncle came to Jamaica Inn he must have cast his shadow over the good things, and they died.”

— Daphne du Maurier