J.B. Priestley > Quotes

“We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.”
― J.B. Priestley, An Inspector Calls

“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.”
― J.B. Priestley

“Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.”
― J.B. Priestley

“We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.”
― J.B. Priestley

“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”
― J.B. Priestley

“To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness.”
― J.B. Priestley

“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?”
― J B Priestley John Gielgud

“One of the delights beyond the grasp of youth is that of Not Going. Not to have an invitation for the dance, the party, the picnic, the excursion is to be diminished. To have an invitation and then not to be able to go -- oh cursed spite! Now I do not care the rottenest fig whether I receive an invitation or not. After years of illusion, I finally decided I was missing nothing by Not Going. I no longer care whether I am missing anything or not.”
― J.B. Priestley, Delight

“Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness—when a glorious idea comes to mind, and when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be”
― J.B. Priestley

“But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only cross-sections of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us - the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.”
― J.B. Priestley, Time And The Conways

“To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.”
― J.B. Priestley

“We are like a knight on a quest, condemned to wander through innumerable forests, bewildered and baffled, because the magic beast he is looking for is the horse he is riding.”
― J.B. Priestly

“The way to write a book is the application of the seat of one's pants to the seat of one's chair”
― J B Priestley

“We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.”
― J.B. Priestly

“I was surrounded, and often enchanted, it appeared, by nothings.”
― J.B. Priestley, Man and Time

“She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.”
― J.B. Priestley

“Time's only a kind of dream, Kay. If it wasn't, it would have to destroy everything —the whole universe— and then remake it again every tenth of a second. But Time doesn't
destroy anything. It merely moves us on —in this life— from one peephole to the next.”
― J.B. Priestley, Time And The Conways

“No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation
creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner
world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith”
― J.B. Priestley

“I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces away from 'em by calling 'em the masses and then you accuse them of not having any faces.”
― J.B. Priestly

“A grey tide, engulfing all colour and shape of things that had been or were to be, rushed across his mind, sweeping the life out of everything and leaving him all hollow inside. Once again he sat benumbed in a shadow show. Yet as ever—and this was the cruel stroke—there was something left, left to see that all the lights were being quenched, left to cry out with a tiny crazed voice in the grey wastes. This was what mattered, this was the worst, and black nights and storms and floods and crumbling hills were not to be compared with this treachery from within. It wasn’t panic nor despair, he told himself, that made so many fellows commit suicide; it was this recurring mood, draining the colour out of life and stuffing one’s mouth with ashes. One crashing bullet and there wasn’t even anything left to remember what had come and gone, to cry in the mind’s dark hollow; life could then cheat as it liked, for it did not matter; you had won the last poor trick. Having conjured the malady into a phrase or two, Penderel felt better, came out of his reverie and looked about for entertainment.”
― J.B. Priestley, Benighted

“Time must be tracked down in the inner world ... It is one of the peculiarities of Time that it is intensely private and yet also widely shared.”
― J.B. Priestley, Man and Time

“There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age. I missed it coming and going.”
― j.b. priestley

“When we are older we are able to live in - and make the best of - one continuing world, but when we are young we feel sometimes that in an unknown and sinister fashion the whole cosmos has been changed, one age ended and another begun when we were not noticing what was happening.”
― J.B. Priestley, Lost Empires

“The happiest types I've ever known ran puppet shows - turning puppets into people. It works much better than turning people into puppets.”
― J.B. Priestley

“Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests;... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press; ... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world."
J.B. Priestley in English Journey (referring to football), published in 1934.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“Both the fanatical believers and the fixed attitude people are loud in their scorn of what they call “woolly minds.”… [But it] is the woolly mind that combines scepticism about everything with credulity about everything. Being woolly it has no hard edges. It is easy, pliant, yet it has its own toughness. Because it bends, it does not break. … The woolly mind realizes that we live in an unimaginable gigantic, complicated, mysterious universe. To try to stuff the vast bewildering creation into a few neat pigeon-holes is absurd. We don’t know enough, and to pretend we do is mere intellectual conceit. … The best we can do is keep looking out for clues, for anything that will light us a step or two in the dark.”
― J.B. Priestley, Over the Long High Wall

“It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting.”
― J.B. Priestley, Thoughts in the wilderness

“We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.”
― J.B. Priestley, An Inspector Calls

“During dinner at the Dersinghams in "Angel Pavement"...
"Do you ever watch rugger, Golspie?" Mr Dersingham demanded down the table.
"What, rugby? Haven't see a match for years," replied Mr Golspie. "Prefer the other kind when I do watch one."
Major Trape raised his eyebrows, "What, you a soccah man? Not this professional stuff? Don't tell me you like that."
"What's the matter with it?"
"Oh, come now! I mean, you can't possibly --I mean it's a dirty business, selling fellahs for money and so on, very unsporting.”
― J.B. Priestley, Angel Pavement

“But what is this clock, marking only so many years, that such men seem to consult in the dark of their being? We do not know. All we do know for certain is that no such clock, no such warnings, can come out of the passing time that we are told is all we have. They belong to a larger idea of Time, like all these dreams that came true.”
― J.B. Priestley, Man and Time