Daphne du Maurier Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Daphne du Maurier
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Daphne du Maurier
I would not be young again, if you offered me the world. But then I'm prejudiced.' 'You talk,' I said, 'as if you were ninety-nine.' 'For a woman I very nearly am,' she said. 'I'm thirty five.

Daphne du Maurier
You guessed that somewhere, in heaven knew what country and what guise, there was someone who was part of your body and your brain, and that without him you were lost, a straw blown by the wind.

Daphne du Maurier
We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.

Daphne du Maurier
And through it all and afterwards they would be together, making their own world where nothing mattered but the things they could give to one another, the loveliness, the silence, and the peace.

Daphne du Maurier
Nothing like a cup of tea to make a person feel better, man or woman.

Daphne du Maurier
Those dripping crumpets, I can see them now. Tiny crisp wedges of toast, and piping-hot, flaky scones. Sandwiches of unknown nature, mysteriously flavoured and quite delectable, and that very special gingerbread. Angel cake, that melted in the mouth, and his rather stodgier companion, bursting with peel and raisins. There was enough food there to keep a starving family for a week.

Daphne du Maurier
All whispers and echoes from a past that is gone teem into the sleeper's brain, and he is with them, and part of them.

Daphne du Maurier
I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.

Daphne du Maurier
No person will ever get into my blood as a place can... People and things pass away, but not places.

Daphne du Maurier
If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.

Daphne du Maurier
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
How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.

Daphne du Maurier
The urge to climb will never be explained. In olden days, perhaps it was a wish to reach the stars. Today, anyone so minded can buy a seat on a plane and feel himself master of the skies. Even so, he will not have rock under his feet, or air upon his face; nor will he know the silence that comes only on the hills.

Daphne du Maurier
But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

Daphne du Maurier
He was like someone sleeping who woke suddenly and found the world...all the beauty of it, and the sadness too. The hunger and the thirst. Everything he had never thought about or known was there before him, and magnified into one person who by chance, or fate—call it what you will—happened to be me.

Daphne du Maurier
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
How lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger's socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman...

Daphne du Maurier
Why, he wondered, should he remember her suddenly, on such a day, watching the rain falling on the apple trees?

Daphne du Maurier
There could never be a more beautiful city than this. It was cold, austere, belonging only to the water.... Stockholm was a northern city, her beauty stark and frozen even in midsummer, the blue water like the pure caverns of a glacier...

Daphne du Maurier
The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.

Daphne du Maurier
Time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real.

Daphne du Maurier
The child destined to be a writer is vulnerable to every wind that blows. Now warm, now chill, next joyous, then despairing, the essence of his nature is to escape the atmosphere about him, no matter how stable, even loving. No ties, no binding chains, save those he forges for himself.

Daphne du Maurier
I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.

Daphne du Maurier
He lacked tenderness; he was rude; and he had more than a streak of cruelty in him; he was a thief and a liar. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised; but she knew she could love him... This was no choice made with the mind.

Daphne du Maurier
Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

Daphne du Maurier
I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.

Daphne du Maurier
The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.

Daphne du Maurier
But I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so—modesty—are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.

Daphne du Maurier