Top 500 Daphne du Maurier Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “It’s only just turned the half-hour, Madam,” said Norah in a special voice, bright and cheerful like the nurse. I wondered if Maxim’s grandmother realized that people spoke to her in this way. I wondered when they had done so for the first time, and if she had noticed then. Perhaps she had said to herself, “They think I’m getting old, how very ridiculous,” and then little by little she had become accustomed to it, and now it was as though they had always done so, it was part of her background.”

— Daphne du Maurier

303. “Joss Merlyn shouted at the top of his voice, and the noise was deafening. Mary did not fear him like this; the whole thing was bluster and show; it was when he lowered his voice and whispered that she knew him to be deadly. For all his thunder he was frightened; she could see that; and his confidence was rudely shaken.”

— Daphne du Maurier

304. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

306. “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

307. “Avrei voluto tornare indietro, catturare di nuovo l’attimo fuggito, ma poi mi resi conto che anche se lo avessimo fatto non sarebbe stato lo stesso, perfino la luce del sole non sarebbe stata uguale, avrebbe gettato un’ombra diversa, la contadinella questa volta non ci avrebbe salutati, forse non ci avrebbe neppure visti. Il pensiero aveva un che di raggelante, un pizzico di malinconia.”

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

309. “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

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

— Daphne du Maurier

311. “You are such a part of me that to stand alone leaves me dumb, without speech, without eyes. Life is valueless unless I can share everything with you – beauty, ugliness, pain.”

— Daphne du Maurier

312. “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

313. “In those days, before the First World War, young women did not use makeup. Anna was free of lipstick, and her gold hair was rolled in great coils over her ears.”

— Daphne du Maurier

314. “The wild shouting, the laughter, and the singing with which they had fortified themselves for the journey would have been a relief, however loathsome; but this deadly quietude was sinister.”

— Daphne du Maurier

315. “It does happen, you know, from time to time, that a man finds a woman who is the answer to all his more searching dreams. And the two have understanding of each other, from the lightest moment to the darkest mood.”

— Daphne du Maurier

316. “He was folding up his napkin, pushing back his plate, and I wondered how it was he spoke so casually, as thought the matter was of little consequence, a mere adjustment of plans. Whereas to me it was a bombshell, exploding in a thousand tiny fragments.”

— Daphne du Maurier

317. “She thought of the laughing, carefree Jem who had driven her to Launceston, who had swung hands with her in the market square, who had kissed her and held her. Now he was grave and silent, his face in shadow. The idea of a dual personality troubled her, and frightened her as well. He was like a stranger to her tonight, obsessed by some grim purpose she could not understand.”

— Daphne du Maurier

318. “We had been careful, ever since the September decrees, to adopt the new courtesies. Monsieur and madame were things of the past, like the old calendar. I had to remind myself also that today was the 19th Frimaire, Year II of the Republic, and no longer the 9th of December, 1793.”

— Daphne du Maurier

319. “Who will ever know your heart, who will ever know your mind? You have that fatal quality of silence – of a tight repression that suggests a hidden fire – yes, a burning fire unquenchable.”

— Daphne du Maurier

320. “Memories are very beautiful things, when you are old.”

— Daphne du Maurier

321. “He was like a schoolmaster after all. It was just as she had feared. He was now going to make a fuss about her drawings, and write to Pappy, and worry Pappy, and say that time must be set aside for her to work, and everything would become a performance, and a ritual, and be difficult. Drawing would become a burden instead of an escape.”

— Daphne du Maurier

322. “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

323. “When the water drains from the marshes, and little by little the yellow sands appear, rippling and hard and firm, it seems to my foolish fancy, as I lie here, that I too go seaward with the tide, and all my old hidden dreams that I thought buried for all time are bare and naked to the day, just as the shells and the stones are on the sands.”

— Daphne du Maurier

324. “Then all at once she turned to me, her face pale, her eyes strangely alight. She said, “Is it possible to love someone so much, that it gives one a pleasure to hurt them? To hurt them by jealousy, I mean, and to hurt myself at the same time. Pleasure and pain, an equal mingling of pleasure and pain, just as an experiment, a rare sensation?”

— Daphne du Maurier

325. “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

326. “What trail of thought, confused and indirect, drove through those minds of theirs, to cloud their judgement? What waves of impulse swept about their being, moving them to anger and withdrawal, or else to sudden generosity? We were surely different, with our blunter comprehension, moving more slowly to the compass points, while they, erratic and unstable, were blown about their course by winds of fancy.”

— Daphne du Maurier

327. “You know, when I die, the money goes to Ellen,’ she told Louis one day, and he had not said much; he looked rather vague, as though money was something he never touched; but a week or so later Ellen came into the room very flushed and excited and said that Louis-Mathurin had proposed.”

— Daphne du Maurier

328. “I had not realised until then that grown-up people could be unhappy, that they could cry. I did not want to think about it.”

— Daphne du Maurier

329. “But ‘I read also’ intensified, then and during the following year, with a lot of Scott, a lot of Thackeray, and R. L. Stevenson never far away.”

— Daphne du Maurier

330. “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

331. “Charles was nowhere to be seen. Maria had to go to look for him. Celia’s anxiety mounted. Pappy would never hang on until after six. He was like a baby with a bottle. He had to keep to his regular time for his whiskey or his whole system became disorganized.”

— Daphne du Maurier

332. “He had been dedicated to science since his first birthday, and Louis-Mathurin would hear of no other career for his eldest son. Kicky was seventeen on the sixth of March, and did not look much like a prospective scientist.”

— Daphne du Maurier

333. “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

334. “She put the steaming mutton down in front and he smacked his lips ‘they taught you something where you came from, anyway,’ he said. ‘I always say there’s two things women ought to do by instinct, and cookin’s one of ’em.”

— Daphne du Maurier

335. “It is strange how in moments of great crisis the mind whips back to childhood.”

— Daphne du Maurier

336. “Supposing you are caught in Launceston with Mr. Bassat’s pony? You would look a fool then, wouldn’t you? And so would I, if they clapped me into prison alongside of you.” “No one’s going to catch me; not yet awhile, anyway. Take a risk, Mary; don’t you like excitement, that you’re so careful of your own skin? They must breed you soft down Helford way.” She rose like a fish to his bait.”

— Daphne du Maurier

337. “You’re a good girl,” he said. “I’m fond of you, Mary; you’ve got sense, and you’ve got pluck; you’d make a good companion to a man. They ought to have made you a boy.”

— Daphne du Maurier

338. “Think of the unkind things we have forgotten,” said Niall. “Those are the ones that will be totted up against us. I sometimes wake up in the early morning and go quite cold thinking of all the things I must have done and can’t remember.” “Pappy must have taught you that,” said Celia. “Pappy had a fearful theory that when we die we go to a theater, and we sit down and see the whole of our lives re-acted before us. And nothing is omitted. Not one single, sordid detail. We have to watch it all.”

— Daphne du Maurier

339. “No doubt it was the truth, or so distorted in her mind that, to her, it became so.”

— Daphne du Maurier

340. “When I lie I like to base the lie on a foundation of fact, for it appeases not only conscience but a sense of justice.”

— Daphne du Maurier

341. “Kicky put the ten pounds back in the envelope. It was really very good of mamma. All she had in the world was that rather inadequate but so eagerly expected little dividend every quarter. He was not even sure where it came from – something to do with his grandmother who had died at Boulogne.”

— Daphne du Maurier

342. “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

343. “His best friends were Tom Armstrong, who was two years older than himself and had been painting now for several years, and a Scotsman, Lamont, with a dry sense of humour and a twinkling eye. There was Rowley, too, a giant of wonderful physique and the tender heart of a child, moved to tremendous rage if anyone insulted his friends; Poynter, and Aleco Ionides, and the sinister, slightly crazy Jimmy Whistler, who wore his dark curls long and was a great poseur, even in those days.”

— Daphne du Maurier

344. “Oh, mamma dearest, don’t let’s look for the clouds till they are on us,’ he said in despair. ‘Things must come all right for us in the end. As long as my eye does not fail me we need none of us starve.”

— Daphne du Maurier

345. “So dawned family interest, family pride, which was something quite other than clapping from a box in Wyndham’s Theatre when the curtain went up and D was standing there, smiling, bowing his head, looking from right to left and then up to the gallery, which happened at the end of the play. This was just part of something I had always known; it had nothing to do with us children but belonged to the audience, the people down there and all around, whom we should never know, who were not ‘us’.”

— Daphne du Maurier

346. “So much laughter, so much gaiety, up in the wards there with the wounded men, and the same below, in the pillared hall, and out in the grounds too, where the more mobile would come rabbiting. Once only did I realise how the war must have touched them, and this was when a fresh entry of wounded came by ambulance to the entrance in the great hall.”

— Daphne du Maurier

347. “Some inner sense warned them that in their ignorance dwelt security, a happiness that was never wild, never triumphant, but peaceful and silent.”

— Daphne du Maurier

348. “How pleasant,′ Dona said, peeling her fruit; ’the rest of us can only run away from time to time, and however much we pretend to be free, we know it is only for a little while – our hands and our feet are tied.”

— Daphne du Maurier

349. “The word lingered in the air once I had uttered it, dancing before me, and because he received it silently, making no comment, the word magnified itself into something heinous and appalling, a forbidden word, unnatural to the tongue. And I could not call it back, it could never be unsaid.”

— Daphne du Maurier

350. “Mary’s mother turned to her and said, “There’s something of me gone in the grave with poor Nell, Mary. I don’t know whether it’s my faith or what it is, but my heart feels tired and I can’t go on anymore.”

— Daphne du Maurier