J.B. Priestley Quotes & Sayings

As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that can rise to delight that thank Heaven nobody is reporting in this fashion on us. — J.B. Priestley

In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare. — J.B. Priestley

On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. ... I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame ... I was utterly at a loss how to account for it. — J.B. Priestley

There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be. — J.B. Priestley

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats. — J.B. Priestley

The real lost souls don't wear their hair long and play guitars. They have crew cuts and trained minds, sign on for research in biological warfare, and don't give their parents a moment's worry. — J.B. Priestley

If there was a little room somewhere in the British Museum that contained only about twenty exhibits and good lighting, easy chairs, and a notice imploring you to smoke, I believe I should become a museum man. — J.B. Priestley

A loving wife will do anything for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him. — J.B. Priestley

I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes. — J.B. Priestley

There can be no doubt that smoking nowadays is largely a miserable automatic business. People use tobacco without ever taking an intelligent interest in it. They do not experiment, compare, fit the tobacco to the occasion. A man should always be pleasantly conscious of the fact that he is smoking. — J.B. Priestley

Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument. — J.B. Priestley

If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write. — J.B. Priestley

The point is to be good-to be sensitive and sincere. — J.B. Priestley

But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people. — J.B. Priestley

The greatest writers of this age ... are aware of the mystery of our existence. — J.B. Priestley

The people who pretend that dying is rather like strolling into the next room always leave me unconvinced. Death, like birth, must be a tremendous event. — J.B. Priestley

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

I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it? — J.B. Priestley

I fancy that the Hell of Too Many People would occupy a respectable place in the hierarchy of infernal regions. — J.B. Priestley

It had the old double keyboard, an entirely different set of keys for capitals and figures, so that the paper seemed a long way off, and the machine was as big and solid as a battle cruiser. Typing was then a muscular activity. You could ache after it. If you were not familiar with those vast keyboards, your hand wandered over them like a child lost in a wood. The noise might have been that of a shipyard on the Clyde. You would no more have thought of carrying one of those grim structures as you would have thought of travelling with a piano. — J.B. Priestley

Sometimes you might think the machines we worship make all the chief appointments, promoting the human beings who seem closest to them. — 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

To resent and remember brings strife; to forgive and forget brings peace. — J.B. Priestley

A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves. — J.B. Priestley

To multiply your joy, count your blessings. — J.B. Priestley

What appears to be definite and precise does not belong to any acceptable reality. It is only the experiences, the queer previsions, the fleeting premonitions, that are real. Vague and insubstantial though they may appear to be, compared with anything else in the mists and shifting lights of Time theory, they loom up like mountains of iron ore. — J.B. Priestley

Childhood, catching our imagination when it is fresh and tender, never lets go of us. — J.B. Priestley

Nowadays, it is true, we have mass media and expert propaganda to spread suspicion and fear. But the people I mean - and they form the great majority - are not suspicious and fearful, as many educated and more influential persons are. Propaganda has not made them accept the Bomb. We protesters, though we may have won over some of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, have not made them reject it. They remain profoundly, astonishingly, shockingly indifferent. — J.B. Priestley

A synopsis is a cold thing. You do it with the front of your mind. If you're going to stay with it, you never get quite the same magic as when you're going all out. — J.B. Priestley

We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. — J.B. Priestley

A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow. — J.B. Priestley

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness. — J.B. Priestley

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

We cannot get grace from gadgets. — 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

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

The Canadian is often a baffled man because he feels different from his British kindred and his American neighbours, sharply refused to be lumped together with either of them, yet cannot make plain his difference. — J.B. Priestley

We pay when old for the excesses of youth. — J.B. Priestley

I don't dislike life the way you seem to do. But then you may be a fish out of water. I'm not. I'm where I want to be, doing what I want to do. But even so, there's nothing wonderful about it. Most of the time it's like - let's say - living with a lion. One day you can make it jump through hoops, or even ride on its back. But get careless, make a wrong move, and it'll have you in a corner and be tearing an arm off. — J.B. Priestley

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

What a grand, higgledy-piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is! — J.B. Priestley

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

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear. — J.B. Priestley

But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from ... the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviare, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them. — J.B. Priestley

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile. — 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

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy. — J.B. Priestley

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch. — J.B. Priestley

Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something bovine about them. — J.B. Priestley

We cannot get grace from gadgets. In the Bakelite house of the future, the dishes may not break, but the heart can. Even a man with ten shower baths may find life flat, stale and unprofitable. — J.B. Priestley

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write. — J.B. Priestley

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

Depending upon shock tactics is easy, whereas writing a good play is difficult. Pubic hair is no substitute for wit. — J.B. Priestley

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

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours. — J.B. Priestley

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

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

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

Production goes up and up because high pressure advertising and salesmanship constantly create new needs that must be satisfied: this is Admass- a consumer's race with donkeys chasing an electric carrot. — J.B. Priestley

It is hard to tell where the MCC ends and the Church of England begins. — J.B. Priestley

In a world shaped and colored more and more by politicians, the nations meet politically, and hardly any other way to settle their differences. — J.B. Priestley

In spite of recent jazzed-up one-day matches, cricket to be fully appreciated demands leisure, some sunny warm days and an understanding of its finer points. — 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

Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man. — J.B. Priestley

We complain and complain, but we have lived and seen the blossom -apple, pear, cherry, plum, almond blossom - in the sun; and the best among us cannot pretend they deserve - or could contrive - anything better. — J.B. Priestley

Public men, Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges. — J.B. Priestley

Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes. — J.B. Priestley

We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. — J.B. Priestley

I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell. — J.B. Priestley

Western man is schizophrenic. — 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

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

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing. — J.B. Priestley

In a matriarchy men should be encouraged to take it easy, for most women prefer live husbands to blocks of shares and seats on the board. — J.B. Priestley

The most lasting reputation I have is for an almost ferocious aggressiveness, when in fact I am amiable, indulgent, affectionate, shy and rather timid at heart. — J.B. Priestley

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

I have always been a grumbler. I am designed for the part - sagging face, weighty underlip, rumbling, resonant voice. Money couldn't buy a better grumbling outfit. — J.B. Priestley

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

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people. — J.B. Priestley

It is good fiction, so largely ignored now, that brings us so much closer to the real facts. — J.B. Priestley

Nearly everything possible had been done to spoil the game: the heavy financial interest; the absurd transfer and player-selling system; the lack of any birth or residential qualifications; the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the press; the monstrous partisanships of the crowds. — J.B. Priestley

Our dourest parsons, who followed the nonconformist fashion of long extemporary prayers, always seemed to me to be bent on bullying God. — J.B. Priestley

Man, the creature who knows he must die, who has dreams larger than his destiny, who is forever working a confidence trick on himself, needs an ally. Mine has been tobacco. — J.B. Priestley

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. — J.B. Priestley

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

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

To put failure behind you, face up to it. — J.B. Priestley

To make the most of Christmas, focus on Christ. — J.B. Priestley

California, that advance post of our civilization, with its huge aircraft factories, TV and film studios, automobile way of life ... its flavourless cosmopolitanism, its charlatan philosophies and religions, its lack of anything old and well-tried rooted in tradition and character. — J.B. Priestley

The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please. — J.B. Priestley

To love to teach is one thing, to love those you teach is another. — J.B. Priestley

Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing. — J.B. Priestley

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

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent. — J.B. Priestley

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