Brina > Brina's Quotes

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“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, Rebecca

“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“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.”
― Daphne duMaurier, Rebecca

“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.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting quite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die, the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched. Here we sat together, Maxim and I, hand-in-hand, and the past and the future mattered not at all. This was secure, this funny little fragment of time he would never remember, never think about again…For them it was just after lunch, quarter-past-three on a haphazard afternoon, like any hour, like any day. They did not want to hold it close, imprisoned and secure, as I did. They were not afraid.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Either you go to America with Mrs. Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me."
"Do you mean you want a secretary or something?"
"No, I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.”
― Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca

“I would have gone too but I wanted to come straight back to you.I kept thinking of you, waiting here, all by yourself, not knowing what was going to happen.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Maxim's voice, clear and strong, "Will someone take my wife outside?She is going to faint.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“You have blotted out the past for me, you know, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“I love you so much' he whispered. 'So much.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Daring to think that the rules do not apply is the mark of a visionary. It’s also a symptom of narcissism. —”
― Ariel Levy, The Rules Do Not Apply

“The beginning is always today.”
― Mary Shelley

“Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I'm never not thinking of you.”
― Virginia Woolf, Selected Diaries

“It may not be your dream, Stepsister, but do not scoff at those who do dream of it.”
― Malinda Lo, Ash

“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“...the things we don't have are sadder than the things we have. Because the things we don't have exist in our imaginations, where they are perfect.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Young Jane Young

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

[Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32]”
― Barbara Tuchman

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“I know beginnings, I know endings too,
and life-in-death, and something else
I'd rather not recall just now.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“All that I am hangs by a thread tonight”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“Let my heiress have full rights,
Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.
Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,
How the tortured breast craves air.
The love of my friends, my enemies' rancor
And the yellow roses in my bushy garden,
And a lover's burning tenderness—all this
I bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.
Also the glory for which I was born,
For which my star, like some whirlwind, soared
And now falls. Look, its falling
Prophesies your power, love and inspiration.
Preserving my generous bequest,
You will live long and worthily.
Thus it will be. You see, I am content,
Be happy, but remember me.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova