Author Profile
J. B. Priestley
1894 – 1984 • British • Writer
31
Total Quotes
Collected Meditations
Showing 31 quotesA 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
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
I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.— 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
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
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
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
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
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
Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.— J. B. Priestley
There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.— J. B. Priestley
If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.— 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