Words of Wisdom & Quotes by Daphne du Maurier
By Emma Ward | On June 8, 2017 | Updated March 9, 2023 | Comments (0)
Daphne du Maurier was a British novelist, playwright, and short story writer. She grew up in a creative family, which inspired her to write from a young age. Here you’ll find a selection of words of wisdom and quotes by Daphne du Maurier, the author who brought us these and other mid-twentieth century classics.
Photo above right courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
After publishing her first novel, The Loving Spirit, at age 22 she went on to write among other classic works Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, Jamaica Inn, and the haunting story that became a terrifying Hitchcock film, The Birds.
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“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.(My Cousin Rachel, 1951)
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“The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.” (My Cousin Rachel, 1951)
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Learn more about Daphne Du Maurier
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“I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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“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.”
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” … Sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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Rebecca is one of Du Maurier’s best-known works
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“When she smiled it was as though she embraced the world.” (The Birds & Other Stories, 1952)
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“Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
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“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.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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“We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.” (Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer, 1978)
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Daphne Du Maurier: Her Writing Habits and Style
(photo of her study at Smuggler’s Museum courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
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“She knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live.” (Frenchman’s Creek , 1942)
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“I thought of all those heroines of fiction who looked pretty when they cried, and what a contrast I must make with a blotched and swollen face, and red rims to my eyes.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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“I might say that we have paid for freedom. But I have had enough melodrama in this life, and would willingly give my five senses if they could ensure us our present peace and security. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind of course we have on moments of depression; but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity.” (Rebecca, 1938)
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“There is no going back in life, no return, no second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed.” (My Cousin Rachel, 1951)
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“Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.”
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