J. B. Priestley Quotes - Page 2

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• 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

  Feelings, Calling, Faces

  'Saturn Over the Water' ch. 2

  9 Copy quote

• Man, the creature who knows he must die, who has dreams larger than his destiny, who is forever working a confidence trick on himself, needs an ally. Mine has been tobacco.

  J. B. Priestley

  Dream, Destiny, Men

  31 Copy quote

• We complain and complain, but we have lived and seen the blossom -apple, pear, cherry, plum, almond blossom - in the sun; and the best among us cannot pretend they deserve - or could contrive - anything better.

  J. B. Priestley

  Apples, Tree, Complaining

  23 Copy quote

• Western man is schizophrenic.

  J. B. Priestley

  Men, Schizophrenic, Western

  19 Copy quote

• The point is to be good-to be sensitive and sincere.

  J. B. Priestley

  Sincere, Sensitive, Goodness

  13 Copy quote

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

  J. B. Priestley

  Happiness, Smile, Laughter

  J.B. Priestley (1926). “George Meredith”

  17 Copy quote

• Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing.

  J. B. Priestley

  Men, Energy, Fool

  12 Copy quote

• Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.

  J. B. Priestley

  Pregnancy, Writing, Might

  International Herald Tribune, January 3, 1978.

  10 Copy quote

• I have always been a grumbler. I am designed for the part - sagging face, weighty underlip, rumbling, resonant voice. Money couldn't buy a better grumbling outfit.

  J. B. Priestley

  Voice, Grumbling, Sagging

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Soccer, Men, Two

  Good Companions (1929) bk. 1, ch. 1

  31 Copy quote

• Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned.

  J. B. Priestley

  Age, Advertising, Perfect Life

  13 Copy quote

• We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs.

  J. B. Priestley

  Coffee, Food, Eye

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  Race, Needs, Pressure

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Dream, Real, Self

  18 Copy quote

• The most lasting reputation I have is for an almost ferocious aggressiveness, when in fact I am amiable, indulgent, affectionate, shy and rather timid at heart.

  J. B. Priestley

  Heart, Shy, Facts

  22 Copy quote

• It is good fiction, so largely ignored now, that brings us so much closer to the real facts.

  J. B. Priestley

  Real, Fiction, Facts

  21 Copy quote

• A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves.

  J. B. Priestley

  School, Men, Style

  18 Copy quote

• Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

  J. B. Priestley

  Children, Garden, Public Opinion

  17 Copy quote

• I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.

  J. B. Priestley

  Thinking, Two, Slang

  16 Copy quote

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

  J. B. Priestley

  Past, People, Bovine

  14 Copy quote

• To make the most of Christmas, focus on Christ.

  J. B. Priestley

  Focus, Christ

  4 Copy quote

• It had the old double keyboard, an entirely different set of keys for capitals and figures, so that the paper seemed a long way off, and the machine was as big and solid as a battle cruiser. Typing was then a muscular activity. You could ache after it. If you were not familiar with those vast keyboards, your hand wandered over them like a child lost in a wood. The noise might have been that of a shipyard on the Clyde. You would no more have thought of carrying one of those grim structures as you would have thought of travelling with a piano.

  J. B. Priestley

  Children, Piano, Keys

  16 Copy quote

• In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that 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.

  J. B. Priestley

  Warfare, Nuclear, Bombs

  11 Copy quote

• Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

  J. B. Priestley

  Writing, Would Be, Ifs

  9 Copy quote

• If there is one thing left that I would like to do, it's to write something really beautiful. And I could do it, you know. I could still do it.

  J. B. Priestley

  Beautiful, Writing, Stills

  11 Copy quote

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