J. B. Priestley quotes - page 2

[I]f self-deception has to be risked anyhow, it might be better to risk it to take a broad view than a narrow view. It may be foolish, perhaps even dangerous, to wander too far from the highway and then be the dupe of fantasies; but it may be even more foolish, even more dangerous in the end, to be so determined to keep to the well-tested road that you wear blinkers, see nothing of the surrounding landscape, and find the road itself, all that you can see, more and more wearisome and detestable. (J. B. Priestley)
A man can afford to let himself go in a hen-house. View quote
J. B. Priestley
We know only too well that there are times when everything goes wrong, but, in our haste to make the worst of life, we are apt to forget that there are also times when everything goes right. View quote
J. B. Priestley
[Y]ou've got to put up a show of being tough nowadays, especially if you're a girl, or else they'd all be walking over you with nailed boots. They do that anyhow, in the long run, if you're a woman. View quote
J. B. Priestley
We cannot go forward and build up this new world order, and this is our war aim, unless we begin to think differently...one must stop thinking in terms of property and power and begin thinking in terms of community and creation. Property is the old-fashioned way of thinking of a country as a thing, and a collection of things in that thing, all owned by certain people and constituting property; instead of thinking of a country as the home of a living society with the community itself as the first test. View quote
J. B. Priestley
Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something suspiciously bovine about them. View quote
J. B. Priestley
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. View quote
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. View quote
J. B. Priestley
I wished I had been born early enough to have been called a Little Englander. It was a term of sneering abuse, but I should be delighted to accept it as a description of myself. That little sounds the right note of affection. It is little England I love. View quote
J. B. Priestley
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. View quote
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)
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. View quote
J. B. Priestley
Cathedral cities, market towns, ports forgotten by the sea, spas long out of fashion, all these can decay beautifully, and often their charm increases as the life ebbs out of them. Industrial towns, like steam-engines, are only even tolerable if they are in working order and puffing away. View quote
J. B. Priestley
Science can function only by abstracting from the reality in which the scientist has his being. In spite of the astonishing complications it discovers, with which it dazzles and almost blinds us, science is compelled by its own terms of reference to be a drastic simplification. View quote
J. B. Priestley
To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
J. B. Priestley
A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours. View quote
J. B. Priestley
Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. View quote
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? View quote
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)
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. View quote
J. B. Priestley
She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years. View quote
J. B. Priestley
Western man is schizophrenic. View quote
J. B. Priestley
I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell. View quote
J. B. Priestley