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37b8f20
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It doesn't make for sanity, does it, living with the devil.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d15668d
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The door from the kitchen opened, and the smell of Freada's Chesterfield cigarettes
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Daphne du Maurier |
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cbb7832
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We're safe enough now,' he thought, 'we're snug and tight, like an air-raid shelter. We can hold out. It's just the food that worries me. Food and coal for the fire. We've enough for two or three days, not more. By that time...' No use thinking ahead as far as that. And they'd be giving directions on the wireless. People would be told what to do. And now, in the midst of many problems, he realised that it was dance music only coming over ..
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emergency
radio
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Daphne du Maurier |
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61c3673
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The system might one day change, but human nature remained the same, and there were always people who profited at the expense of others.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f00c87a
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Our minds had met and crossed and understood from the first moment when Victor introduced us in my club, and that queer, inexplicable bond of the heart, breaking through every barrier, every restraint, had kept us close to one another always, in spite of silence, absence, and long years of separation.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c7e8b4b
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It was not chance that brought us together again. I am sure of that. These things are predestined. I have a theory that each man's life is like a pack of cards, and those we meet and sometimes love are shuffled with us. We find ourselves in the same suit, held by the hand of Fate. The game is played, we are discarded, and pass on.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ba81108
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I glanced out of the window, and it was like turning the page of a photograph album. Those roof-tops and that sea were mine no more. They belonged to yesterday, to the past.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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795cfae
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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94f60e9
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We change from the awakening questing creatures we were once, afire with wonder, and expectancy, and doubt, to persons of opinion and authority, our habits formed, our characters moulded in a pattern
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2e85797
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the inevitable lorgnette, the enemy to other people's privacy.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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36636d1
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That's never been my life, nor ever will." "Why not? You'll wed a farmer one day, or small tradesman, and live respectably among your neighbours. Don't tell them you lived once at Jamaica Inn, and had love made to you by a horse-thief. They'd shut their doors against you. Good-bye, and here's prosperity to you."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5dda70c
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I loved you too much, wanted you too much, had for you too great a tenderness. Now all of this is like a twisted root in my heart, a deadly poison in my brain. You have made of me a madman. You fill me with a kind of horror, a devastating hate that is akin to love - a hunger that is nausea.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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48fc381
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Do you know so little about children, Monsieur Jean,' she asked, 'that you imagine, because they don't cry, therefore they feel nothing? If so, you're much mistaken.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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9472975
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That was yesterday. Today we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2a55c88
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It was disturbing, like an enchanted place. I had not thought it could be as beautiful as this
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3db8295
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I was aware of a sense of freedom, as though I had no responsibilities at all.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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512af62
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I have no great opinion of the human race. It is just as well, now and again, that we have wars, so that men know what it is to suffer pain. One day they will exterminate themselves, as they have exterminated the rabbits. So much the better. The world will be peaceful again, with nothing left but the forest over there, and the soil.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f8b63c4
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She would have stood by Giles's side, and shaken hands with people, a smile on her face. I could not do that. I had not the pride, I had not the guts. I was badly bred.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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26158c6
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So death, Shelagh decided, was a moment for compliments, for everyone saying polite things about everybody else which they would not dream of saying at another time.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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adf02ac
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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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65dbc6b
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If death came now, he would be an ally; existence was not a thing she welcomed anymore. Life had been crushed from her anyway, and the body lying on the bed did not belong to her. She had no wish to live
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e457111
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Then men were not dependent upon women after all, as she had thought--women were dependent upon men. Boys were frail, boys cried, boys were tender, boys were helpless. Mary Anne knew this, because she was the eldest girl among her three young brothers, and the baby Isobel did not count at all. Men also were frail, men also cried, men also were tender, men also were helpless. Mary Anne knew this because her stepfather, Bob Farquhar, was all ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4af225e
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If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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513684f
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Thank God nobody knew who he was, and he did not have to talk, but the sense of oppression was with him just the same. He was aware of a feeling of acute dislike, almost of hatred, towards all these unknown men and women who were filing past him to the stalls. They were like the spectators at an arena in ancient Rome. They had all dined well, and now they had come to watch Maria being torn to pieces by lions. Their eyes were avaricious, the..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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cc75529
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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." "Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if y..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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24f0fa5
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Why are you sitting here beside me, then?' 'Because I want to; because I must; because now and forever more this is where I belong to be.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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94b0b77
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Someday, somehow, I would repay my cousin Rachel.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b44319d
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I did not know what to answer, because it would be too sudden and too direct, but I knew in my heart that what I wanted was everything that could be between a woman and a man; not at first, of course, but later, when we had found our other mountain, or our wilderness, or wherever it was we might go to hide ourselves from the world. There was no need to rehearse all that now. The point was that I was prepared to follow her anywhere if she wo..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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733d7fd
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We went through the Happy Valley to the little cove. The azaleas were finished now, the petals lay brown and crinkled on the moss. The bluebells had not faded yet, they made a solid carpet in the woods above the valley, and the young bracken was shooting up, curling and green. The moss smelt rich and deep, and the bluebells were earthy, bitter. I lay down in the long grass beside the bluebells with my hands behind my head, and Jasper at my ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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bc23104
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And oh, heaven - the crowded playhouse, the stench of perfume upon heated bodies, the silly laughter and the clatter, the party in the Royal box - the King himself present - the impatient crowd in the cheap seats stamping and shouting for the play to begin while they threw orange peel on to the stage.
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royal-box
waiting
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Daphne du Maurier |
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55be8a1
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Somehow she would manage to introduce herself, and before her victim had scented danger she had proffered an invitation to her suite. Her method of attack was so downright and sudden that there was seldom opportunity to escape. At the Cote d'Azur she staked a claim upon a certain sofa in the lounge, midway between the reception hall and the passage to the restaurant, and she would have her coffee there after luncheon and dinner, and all who..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3f94911
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Death should be different. It should be like bidding farewell to someone at a station before a long journey, but without the strain.
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the-apple-tree
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6b48fcc
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Truth was something intangible, unseen, which sometimes we stumbled upon and did not recognize, but was found, and held, and understood only by old people near their death, or sometimes by the very pure, the very young.
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truth
wisdom
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6ac4fa5
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Women think differently to men; they travel separate paths. That's why I have no liking for them; they make for trouble and confusion. It was pleasure enough to take you to Launceston, Mary, but when it comes to life and death, like my business now, God knows I wish you a hundred miles away, or sitting primly, your sewing in your lap, in a trim parlour somewhere, where you belong to be." "That's never been my life, nor ever will." "Why not..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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70cce83
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He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised; but she knew she could love him. Nature cared nothing for prejudice. Men and women were like the animals on the farm at Helford, she supposed; there was a common law of attraction for all living things, some similarity of skin or touch, and they would go to one another. This was no choice made with the mind. Animals did not reason, neither did the birds in the air. Mary was no hypoc..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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96a1e32
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Tact was a quality unknown to her, discretion too, and because gossip was the breath of life to her this stranger must be served for her dissection.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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92913f0
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Roger left the cricket stumps and they went into the drawing room. Grandpapa, at the first suggestion of reading aloud, had disappeared, taking Patch with him. Grandmama had cleared away the tea. She found her spectacles and the book. It was Black Beauty. Grandmama kept no modern children's books, and this made common ground for the three of them. She read the terrible chapter where the stable lad lets Beauty get overheated and gives him a ..
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story
storytelling
horse
children-s-books
stories
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f4414c2
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What was the point of having a man if all he could do was turn his back and sleep? Not that she wanted him to do anything else, but in a way it was an insult. The turned back reminded her of all the various backs that had not been turned. Which was a depressing thought, because it meant she was beginning to live in the past. Backs That Were Never Turned. The Reminisces of Maria Delaney...No, it was not depressing. It was funny.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3a3dfdd
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She reminded me of something, and suddenly I knew. I was a tiny child again at Radford, my uncle's home, and he was walking me through the glass-houses in the gardens. There was one flower, an orchid, that grew alone; it was the colour of pale ivory, with one little vein of crimson running through the petals. The scent filled the house, honeyed, and sickly sweet. It was the loveliest flower I had ever seen. I stretched out my hand to stroke..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ec325be
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They jogged along in silence, Jem playing with the thong of the whip, and Mary aware of his hands beside her. She glanced down at them out of the tail of her eye, and she saw they were long and slim; they had the same strength, the same grace, as his brother's. These attracted her; the others repelled her. She realised for the first time that aversion and attraction ran side by side; that the boundary line was thin between them. The thought..
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aversion
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8cdd00a
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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 sift wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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651c483
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The smell of coffee, white dust, tobacco and burnt bread, flowers with a fragrance of wine, and the crimson fruit, soft and overripe. A girl looking over her bare shoulder, with a flash of a smile, gold ear-rings showing from thick black hair brushed away from her face, long arms, a cigarette between her lips. Night like a great dark blanket, voices murmuring at a street corner, the air warm with tired flowers, and a hum from the sea.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ec1e37a
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But he was quite eclipsed by one of the deputies of the Third Estate, a young lawyer called Robespierre--I wonder if Pierre has heard of him?--who suggested that the Archbishop would do better if he told his fellow clergy to join forces with the patriots who were friends to the people, and that if they wanted to help they might set an example by giving up some of their own luxurious way of living, and returning to the simple ways of the fou..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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34ecce9
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houve um excesso de melodrama na minha vida, e daria tudo para conservar a paz e a tranquilidade conquistadas. A Felicidade nao e uma coisa concreta - e uma qualidade do pensamento, um estado de espirito. Claro que temos os nossos momentos de depressao; mas outros momentos ha, tambem, em que o tempo nao e medido pelo relogio e se prolonga pela eternidade. Entao, vendo-o sorrir para mim, sei que estamos juntos, que marchamos lado a lado, sem..
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Daphne du Maurier |