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a32bf47
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Did you never try," I asked, "to make some life of happiness?" "Happiness was not in question," he said; "that went with you, a factor you refused to recognise."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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dd0d378
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but fate and circumstance had made me no more than a shadow in his life, a phantom of what might have been
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f688089
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With Rebecca we enter a world of dreams and daydreams, but they always threaten to tip over into nightmare.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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69af231
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Y no pude menos de pensar como podia sentirme tan dichosa cuando tan negros nubarrones se cernian por encima de nosotros. Era una dicha indefinible la que sentia, y nada parecida a aquella con que sonara durante tantas horas de soledad. No era una felicidad febril y apasionada, sino sosegada y tranquila.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d864090
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She laughed because she must, and because he made her;
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Daphne du Maurier |
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738f536
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He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this. --from a Difference in Temperament
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vanity
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6515ecd
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because just by hating it's possible to be purified from love, just with the sword, with the fire..
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hate
love
sword
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Daphne du Maurier |
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bc94eca
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This car had the wings of Mercury, I thought, for higher yet we climbed, and dangerously fast, and the danger pleased me because it was new to me, because I was young.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2ea0915
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First love is not always happy. It can sometimes be like a terrible illness.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c473a42
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boredom is a pleasing antidote to fear.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3d488e9
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mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d09fe85
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I was like a little scrubby schoolboy with a passion for a sixth-form prefect, and he kinder, and far more inaccessible.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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56d3563
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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. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundations, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day bru..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3e5c7ee
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Swiftly we covered the ground, far too swiftly, I thought, far too easily, and the callous countryside watched us with indifference. We came to the bend in the road that I had wished to imprison as a memory, and the peasant girl was gone, and the color was flat, and it was no more after all than any bend in any road passed by a hundred motorists. The glamour of it had gone with my happy mood, and at the thought of it my frozen face quivered..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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7a7a41f
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Here is Tom Jenkyns, honest and dull, except when he drank too much. It's true that his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c4c195b
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Dust unto dust. There was no reason then for life--it was only a fraction of a moment between birth and death, a movement upon the surface of water, and then it was still. Janet had loved and suffered, she had known beauty and pain, and now she was finished--blotted by the heedless earth, to be no more than a few dull letters on a stone. Joseph
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3a2d36f
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if this was being grown up, then she was younger than she had ever been in her life, young with a hope born of inexperience, a glow within her bright as the unseen paradise. Now was the supreme moment, never equalled and never surpassed, as the train drew into Victoria.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5e8ed45
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b67e57d
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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. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. Today, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly an..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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9560a79
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many impressions to seize and hold, familiar loved facades, balconies, windows, water lapping the cellar steps of decaying palaces, the little red house where D'Annunzio lived, with its garden--our house, Laura called it, pretending it was theirs--and too soon the ferry would be turning left on the direct route to the Piazzale Roma, so missing the best of the Canal, the Rialto, the further palaces.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ca98a96
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On the table there, polished now and plain, an ugly case would stand containing butterflies and moths, and another one with bird's eggs wrapped in cotton wool. "Not all this junk in here," I would say, "take them to the schoolroom darlings," and they would run off, shouting, calling to one another, but the little one staying behind, pottering on his own, quieter than the others"
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a80964d
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I always expect people to ask themselves. Life is too short to send out invitations.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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bb63d18
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No crisis can break through the crust of habit.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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671232d
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Un mes izskiedisim pedejos mirklus, smiedamies par kadu svesinieku, jo mes jau busim svesi viens otram.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f0234f2
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Often rebuked, yet always back returning To those first feelings that were born with me, And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning For idle dreams of things which cannot be; I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces, And not in paths of high morality, And not among the half-distinguished faces, The clouded forms of long-past history. I'll walk where my own nature would be leading; It vexes me to choose another guide: Where the grey flocks..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4da04f9
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These instruments are now made in bulk and used by doctors and chemists all over France, while my father's name is forgotten, but a hundred years ago the "instruments de chimie" designed at la Brulonnerie were sought after by all the apothecaries in Paris." --
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Daphne du Maurier |
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541bf72
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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."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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99caef5
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One was too sensitive,too raw,there were thorns and pin-pricks in so many words that in reality fell lightly on the air.
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sensitivity
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Daphne du Maurier |
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9ca4a58
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They were flung open, and he could hear the applause in the far distance. He could not judge the sound. It always seemed to him the same from any theater. A steady, breaking sound. A sort of roar. It had always sounded the same for as far back as he could remember
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c94f136
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Where do they go, Sophie, those younger selves of ours? How do they vanish and dissolve?" "They don't," I said. "They're with us always, like little shadows, ghosting us through life. I've been aware of mine, often enough, wearing a pinafore over my starched frock, chasing Edme up and down the great staircase in la Pierre."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5dc7432
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I had so identified myself with Rebecca that my own dull self did not exist, had never come to Manderley. I had gone back in thought and in person to the days that were gone.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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7b7ee15
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They say death does this to us once we are warned. Unconsciously, we strive not to waste time. Pettiness falls away, with all those things of little value in our lives. Could we but have known sooner, we tell ourselves, it would have been otherwise; no anger, no destruction, above everything no pride.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d36d8ef
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Daphne du Maurier was the fifth-generation descendant of a French master craftsman who settled in England during the Revolution. The Glass-Blowers, the fictionalized story of his family, was originally published in 1963, but du Maurier first conceived of writing about her French forebears in the mid-1950s. She had recently completed her novel about Mary Anne Clarke, her famous great-great-grandmother, and a complementary work about the Fren..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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9762c66
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Most people would send their letters and telegrams to the Haymarket. The flowers too. When you came to think of it the whole business was horribly like having an operation. The telegrams, the flowers. And the long hours of waiting.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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bc5f278
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She walked briskly, with the quick step of one who did not suffer, or perhaps refused to suffer, any of the inconveniences of old age;
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2ac0bae
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Ambrose used to say to me in Florence that it was worth the tedium of visitors to experience the pleasure of their going.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4286e37
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How am I to know?" said Maria. "People never tell one the truth, not the real truth. It may be all right tonight, and the notices may be good, and everybody be nice--but I shan't really know." "You'll know all right," he said, "here." And he tapped his chest. "Inside," he said. "I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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04ace90
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He settled himself with assurance behind the wheel and I climbed in beside him. As he turned the car away from the cathedral, and so out on to Rue Voltaire, he continued to enthuse in schoolboy fashion, murmuring, "Magnificent, excellent!" under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When we had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man, leapi..
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in-the-driver-s-seat
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c0722dc
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Jacques Duval became a close friend of Marat, editor of L'Ami du Peuple, one of the most widely read and popular newspapers in Paris, and he used to send this down to us every week, so that we could keep abreast of all that was said and done in the capital. I was not sure what to make of it myself; it was an inflammatory sheet, whipping its readers to violence, and urging them to take action against the "enemies of the people" if legislatio..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8f8df8b
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In fact, one of the first decrees passed, the day after the storming of the Tuileries, was an order giving every municipality throughout the country the right to arrest suspects on sight.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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14a6043
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Marat, in L'Ami du Peuple, declared that the only way to save the Revolution for the people was to slaughter the aristocrats en masse; yet if this happened the innocent might suffer with the guilty. Somehow, we no longer seemed to preach the brotherhood of man.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2dad47d
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My aunt Demere was shocked. Her husband, my uncle Demere, was one of the foremost important men in the foundry. He was a master melter, that is to say he prepared the mixture for the pots, and saw to it that the pots were filled with the right amount for the furnaces before the day's melt, and never, since they had been married, had my aunt Demere watched the potash being prepared by the flux-burner. "The first duty of a master's wife is to..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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07f3882
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I could fight the living but I could not fight the dead.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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fcdfad7
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Children's tears are very near the surface, and come at the first crisis.
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Daphne du Maurier |