J. B. Priestley Quotes - Page 2

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• 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

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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.

  J. B. Priestley

  Soccer, Men, Two

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

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

  J. B. Priestley

  Real, Fiction, Facts

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• 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

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

  J. B. Priestley

  Sincere, Sensitive, Goodness

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• 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

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• 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

  Writing, Odds, Challenges

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• 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

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• Western man is schizophrenic.

  J. B. Priestley

  Men, Schizophrenic, Western

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• 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

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• We cannot get grace from gadgets. In the Bakelite house of the future, the dishes may not break, but the heart can. Even a man with ten shower baths may find life flat, stale and unprofitable.

  J. B. Priestley

  Heart, Men, House

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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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

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

  J. B. Priestley

  Writing, Would Be, Ifs

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• 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.

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

  J. B. Priestley

  Age, Advertising, Perfect Life

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• 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

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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

  Race, Needs, Pressure

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• 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

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• 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

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• There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

  J. B. Priestley

  Clever, Genius, Too Much

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• The real lost souls don't wear their hair long and play guitars. They have crew cuts and trained minds, sign on for research in biological warfare, and don't give their parents a moment's worry.

  J. B. Priestley

  Real, Cutting, Hair

  J.B. Priestley (1967). “It's an Old Country”

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• We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

  J. B. Priestley

  Fire, Order, Sound

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