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J. B. Priestley Quotes
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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
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We cannot get grace from gadgets. The dishes in the bakelite houses of the future may not break, but the heart can. A man may be as unhappy in the spun glass trousers of tomorrow as he is today in worsted ones.
J. B. Priestley
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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
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Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something suspiciously bovine about them.
J. B. Priestley
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Anyone who is under the impression that the world is becoming too crowded should move to Nevada.
J. B. Priestley
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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
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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
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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
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This is the age, among things, of chocolate.
J. B. Priestley
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In plain words; now that Britain has told the world 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. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island... No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it.
J. B. Priestley
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Find a street without a flower, and you may be sure that there the English are in exile, still hoping and planning behind the lace curtain and the aspidistra for a time and place that will break into living blossom.
J. B. Priestley
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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
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This little steamer, like all her brave and battered sisters, is immortal. She'll go sailing proudly down the years in the epic of Dunkirk. And our great-grand-children, when they learn how we began this war by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.
J. B. Priestley
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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
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It is hard to tell where the MCC ends and the Church of England begins.
J. B. Priestley
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As we read the school reports on our children we realize a sense of relief that…nobody is reporting in this fashion on us!
J. B. Priestley
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Living in 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
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The first fall of snow is not only an event, but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found?
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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
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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
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I have lived longer than you. I have thought more, and I have suffered more. And I tell you there is more truth to the fundamental nature of things in the most foolish fairy tales than there is in any of your complaints against life.
J. B. Priestley
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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
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We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.
J. B. Priestley
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Although we talk so much about coincidence we do not really believe in it. In our heart of hearts we think better of the universe, we are secretly convinced that it is not such a slipshod, haphazard affair, that everything in it has meaning.
J. B. Priestley
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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. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art.
J. B. Priestley
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
J. B. Priestley
Born:
September 13, 1894
Died:
August 14, 1984
(aged 89)
Bio:
John Boynton Priestley was an English author, novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, social commentator, man of letters and broadcaster, whose career straddled the 20th century.
Known for:
An Inspector Calls (1945)
Dangerous Corner (1932)
When We Are Married (1938)
Time and the Conways (1937)
The Linden Tree (1947)
Most used words:
life
time
find
real
learn
society
hope
man
feel
heart
people
event
day
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