I am Mrs de Winter now…..

I was foraging for wisdom the other day on LinkedIn, adding my own two-penny’s worth here and there, when I came across a discussion about what quotes (or quotations in my language) provide the most inspiring start to the day.

Most were of the tired and glib goody-goody type such as these:

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
Sometimes you have to go a long way to come back a short distance.
Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it

Reach for the sick bowl.

Why not something from Blake such as ‘The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction’? It’s certainly inspiring, and you can spend the rest of the day wondering what it means.

Or something mischievous from Oscar Wilde: ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’ or ‘Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.’

At least these give you pause for thought and provoke a smile.

Or, best of all, there’s my favourite: ‘I am Mrs de Winter now,’ which even men can say to themselves (quietly). A friend of mine (a lady) repeats this in front of the mirror first thing each morning. It’s from the novel and film, Rebecca, and it’s uttered, in a moment of dawning self-confidence and determination, to the appalling housekeeper Mrs Danvers, whose obsession with the glamorous, heartless and dead first Mrs de Winter, doesn’t permit her to acknowledge the second Mrs de Winter as ‘Mrs de Winter’ at all. No wonder, then, that the second Mrs de Winter finally snaps and says the famous line. It’s a useful quotation, I find, if you feel there’s a moment you’ve got to grow into. Try saying it before an important sales presentation.

Incidentally, Mrs Danvers comes to a very sticky end. After urging suicide on the second Mrs de Winter, she sets fire to the de Winters’ gorgeous Elizabethan home, Manderlay, and dies, cackling like a madwoman, in the flames.