J.B. Priestley QUOTES

1 " 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 , Man and Time

2 " 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 , Man and Time

3 " Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves. "

― J.B. Priestley

4 " We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison. "

― J.B. Priestley

5 " 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

6 " 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 , Man and Time

7 " She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years. "

― J.B. Priestley

8 " 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

9 " He talked in a quick staccato manner, so eager to have his say that he often interrupted himself. "

― J.B. Priestley , The Thirty-first of June

10 " People wonder what's the matter with the world these days. They forget that all the best fellows, the men who'd have been in their prime now, who'd have been giving us a lead in everything, are dead [in the Great War]. If you could bring 'em all back... hundreds and hundreds of thousands of 'em, you'd soon see the difference they'd make in the place. But they're dead, and a lot of people, very different sort of people, are alive and kicking. "

― J.B. Priestley , Benighted

11 " The nearest watch-tower, at which the driver pointed, was sharply silhouetted. It was closer than the other had been and had no higher hills behind it, only the clearing sky with its suggestion of of pale gold, now perhaps employed in the propaganda services of the people’s free republic. All the fences, designed to keep those people feeling free and happy without a chance of break-out, could be seen from this vantage point. It was as if the landscape was now within the brain of some giant power lunatic, with barbed and electrified wire running towards nerve ends, watch-towers completing the optical system. "

― J.B. Priestley , The Shapes of Sleep

12 " 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 , An Inspector Calls

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

― J.B. Priestley

14 " 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

15 " 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 , Delight

16 " 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

17 " 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

18 " 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 , Time And The Conways

19 " 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

20 " 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

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