J. B. Priestley Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

J. B. Priestley
Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

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 to do in half a dozen lifetimes.

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

J. B. Priestley
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

J. B. Priestley
Shaw presumes that his friend Stalin has everything under control. Well, Stalin may have made special arrangements to see that Shaw comes to no harm, but the rest of us in Western Europe do not feel quite so sure of our fate, especially those of us who do not share Shaw's curious admiration for dictators.

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

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.

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
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
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
I suppose — in the last resort — you trust life — or you don't. Well — I don't. There's something malicious... corrupt... cruel... at the heart of it. We don't belong. We're a mistake.

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
But the point is, now, at this moment, or at any moment, we're only a cross-section 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
Childhood, catching our imagination when it is fresh and tender, never lets go of us.

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
Remember what we once were and what we thought we'd be. And now this. And it's all we have, Allan, it's us. Every step we've taken — every tick of the clock — making everything worse. If this is all life is, what's the use? Better to die, like carol, before you find it out, before Time gets to work on you. I've felt it before, Allan, but never as I've done tonight. There's a great devil in the universe, and we call it Time.

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
Anyone who is under the impression that the world is becoming too crowded should move to Nevada.

J. B. Priestley
The Theatre is no place to think in. You can think much better quietly at home. An intelligent book will make more people think than the most exquisite production of the finest play. But what the dramatist can do... is to make his audience feel.

J. B. Priestley
Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness – when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, 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 weakness of American civilization, and perhaps the chief reason why it creates so much discontent, is that it is so curiously abstract. It is a bloodless extrapolation of a satisfying life…You dine off the advertiser's 'sizzling' and not the meat of the steak.

J. B. Priestley
Men are much better than their ordinary life allows them to be.

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