J. B. Priestley quotes - page 3

J. B. Priestley was an English novelist, playwright, and broadcaster, recognized for his insightful social commentary. His most famous works include the play "An Inspector Calls" and numerous novels exploring the complexities of time and society. He became a prominent public figure, influencing British culture and literature in the twentieth century. Here are 69 of his quotes:

Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

J. B. Priestley

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

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

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

See also An Inspector Calls, I Have Been Here Before and Time and the Conways.

J. B. Priestley

As soon as we have conquered the moon, we must make plans to conquer the planets. I am not denying that there is in all this a fine mixed element of enterprise, ingenuity and adventure.

J. B. Priestley

I have pointed out already how ideas seep down to wider and commoner levels of intelligence and feeling until at last they are believed to be solid realities.

J. B. Priestley

We tend quite rightly to associate an age with its newest and most original ideas, and there is no harm in this as long as we remember that only a few men, at that time, may have actually held those ideas, and that many decades, often amounting to centuries, may pass before those ideas have seeped down to wider and commoner levels of belief, thought, and feeling.

J. B. Priestley

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

J. B. Priestley

She seemed to have had a sudden terrible glimpse of life as it really was, and was ready to weep at the thought of its strange dusty littleness.

J. B. Priestley

Your mother knows no more about organization than a - a prize rabbit.

J. B. Priestley

But then we assume on our paper that nobody thinks. Which is all right. But where we're wrong-and of course I'm not really including myself but mean the top boys-is in thinking that our readers, dumb as they are, take us seriously.

J. B. Priestley

In spite of its size and range, this is [...] a personal essay. It is a Time-haunted man addressing himself chiefly to all those people he knows from experience to be also Time-haunted.

J. B. Priestley

Fifty years ago I seemed to myself older than other people assumed me to be; now I seem younger.

J. B. Priestley

Fully to appreciate a play we have to maintain a delicate balance between what is taking place apparently on two different levels of the mind. On one level we are involved in the drama, are living imaginatively with its characters. On the other level we are enjoying a performance by actors on a stage, being fully aware that we are in a theatre.

J. B. Priestley

I have pointed out already how ideas seep down to wider and commoner levels of intelligence and feeling until at last they are believed to be solid realities. It is precisely the 'hard-headed and realistic' who all too often exist in cages made out of largely discredited hypotheses. They serve prison sentences behind walls and doors they only imagine are there.

J. B. Priestley

I am not an atheist, but I cannot agree with men who talk about God as if He had once attended a Speech Day at their theological college.

J. B. Priestley