Quotes from George du Maurier

Life ain't all beer and skittles, and more's the pity; but what's the odds, so long as you're happy?

Happiness is like time and space-we make and measure it ourselves; it is as fancy, as big, as little, as you please, just a thing of contrasts and comparisons.

Lovely female shapes are terrible complicators of the difficulties and dangers of this earthly life, especially for their owners.

A little work, a little play,To keep us going—and so, good day!A little warmth, a little light,Of love's bestowing—and so, good night!A little fun, to match the sorrowOf each day's growing—and so, good morrow!A little trust that when we dieWe reap our sowing! and so—good-bye!

An apple is an excellent thing — until you have tried a peach.

Lovely female shapes are terrible complicators of the difficulties and dangers of this earthly life, especially for their owners.

Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling; The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.

the wretcheder one is, the more one smokes; and the more one smokes, the wretcheder one gets—a vicious circle.

Happiness is like time and space--we make and measure it ourselves; it is a fancy--as big, as little, as you please; just a thing of contrasts and comparisons, like health or strength or beauty or any other good--that wouldn't even be noticed but for sad personal experience of its opposite!--or its greater!

Language is a poor thing. You fill your lungs with wind and shake a little slit in your throat, and make mouths, and that shakes the air; and the air shakes a pair of little drums in my head—a very complicated arrangement, with lots of bones behind—and my brain seizes your meaning in the rough. What a roundabout way, and what a waste of time.

Occasionally, too, and quite unbidden, it would warble little impromptu inward melodies of my own composition, which often seemed to me extremely pretty, old-fashioned, and quaint; but one is not a fair judge of one's own productions, especially during the heat of inspiration; and I had not the means of recording them, as I had never learned the musical notes. What the world has lost! Now whose this small voice was I did not find out till many years later, for it was not mine!

Indeed, it required a nose both subtle and unprejudiced to understand and appreciate and thoroughly enjoy that Paris—not the Paris of M. le Baron Haussmann, lighted by gas and electricity, and flushed and drained by modern science; but the "good old Paris" of Balzac and Eugène Sue and Les Mystères—the Paris of dim oil-lanterns suspended from iron gibbets (where once aristocrats had been hung);

But he died of distemper when he was eleven months old. I do not know if little dogs cause as large griefs when they die as big ones; but I settled there should be no more dogs—big or little—for me.

I hated the garb, I hated the surroundings—the big hospital at the back, and that reek of cruelty, drunkenness, and filth, the cattle-market—where every other building was either a slaughter-house, a gin-palace, or a pawnbroker's shop, more than all I hated the gloomy jail opposite, where they sometimes hanged a man in public on a Monday morning.

No such magnificent or seductive apparition has ever been seen before or since on any stage or platform—not even Miss Ellen Terry as the priestess of Artemis in the late laureate's play, The Cup.

This vanity had increased with years and assumed a very dangerous form. He became indiscreet, and, more disastrous still, he told lies! The very dead—the honored and irreproachable dead—were not even safe in their graves. It was his revenge for unforgotten slights. He who kisses and tells, he who tells even though he has not kissed—what can be said for him, what should be done to him?

Ought one ever to play at make-believe with a full-grown man for any consideration whatever—even though he be a parson, and a possible father-in-law? There's a case of conscience for you!

There should be no available ugly frames for beautiful souls to be hurried into by carelessness or mistake, and no ugly souls should be suffered to creep, like hermit-crabs, into beautiful shells never intended for them. The outward and visible form should mark the inward and spiritual grace;

For we have a young lord and a middle-aged baronet—a shocking pair, who should not be allowed to live; but for family influence they would be doing their twenty years' penal servitude in jail, instead of living comfortably sequestered here. Like Ouida's high-born heroes, they "stick to their order," and do not mingle with the rest of us. They ignore us so completely that we cannot help looking up to them in spite of their vices—just as we should do outside.

And we, of the middle class, we stick to our order, too, and do not mingle with the small shop-keepers—who do not mingle with the laborers, artisans, and mechanics—who (alas, for them!) have nobody to look down upon but each other—but they do not; and are the best-bred people in the place.

The whole cosmos is in a man's brains—as much of it, at least, as a man's brains will hold; perhaps it is nowhere else. And when sleep relaxes the will, and there are no earthly surroundings to distract attention—no duty, pain, or pleasure to compel it—riderless Fancy takes the bit in its teeth, and the whole cosmos goes mad and has its wild will of us.

The hardened soul melts at the tones of the singer, at the unspeakable pathos of the sounds that cannot lie; one almost believes—one believes at least in the belief of others. At last one understands, and is purged of intolerance and cynical contempt, and would kneel with the rest, in sheer human sympathy!

They even took a pride in a sick headache, and liked it, if it were the result of a debauch on the previous night; and were as pompously mock-modest about a black eye, got in a squabble at the Argyll Rooms, as if it had been the Victoria Cross. To pass the night in a police cell was such glory that it was worth while pretending they had done so when it was untrue.

She had no remembrance of my name, or the Seraskiers'—I asked, with a beating heart. We had left no trace. Twelve short years had effaced all memory of us!