J. B. Priestley Quotes

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J. B. Priestley

Profession : Writer

Birth : September 13, 1894

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

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

J. B. Priestley

I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.

J. B. Priestley

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

J. B. Priestley

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

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

J. B. Priestley

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

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

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

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?

J. B. Priestley

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

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

J. B. Priestley

As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that can rise to delight that thank Heaven nobody is reporting in this fashion on us.

J. B. Priestley

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

J. B. Priestley

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

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

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

Western man is schizophrenic.

J. B. Priestley

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

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.

J. B. Priestley