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.Collection: Morning
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Age
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.Collection: Age
If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.Collection: Death
Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.Collection: Marriage
The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.Collection: Communication
We pay when old for the excesses of youth.Collection: Age
She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.Collection: Funny
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.
Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
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?
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
Western man is schizophrenic.
Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.
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.
The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.
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.
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.
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.
Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.
There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.
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.
Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.
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.
To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.
Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.
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.
The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.
I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.
A 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.
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.Collection: Good Night
We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.Collection: Body
To multiply your joy, count your blessings.Collection: Blessing
The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please.Collection: Science
To resent and remember brings strife; to forgive and forget brings peace.Collection: Forgive And Forget
A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.Collection: Time
To love to teach is one thing, to love those you teach is another.Collection: Teach
Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument.Collection: Writing
We cannot get grace from gadgets.Collection: Grace
Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.Collection: War
To put failure behind you, face up to it.Collection: Faces
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.Collection: Party
Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.Collection: Pregnancy
But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from...the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviare, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Dream
It is hard to tell where the MCC ends and the Church of England begins.Collection: Church
In a matriarchy men should be encouraged to take it easy, for most women prefer live husbands to blocks of shares and seats on the board.Collection: Husband
A loving wife will do anything for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him.Collection: Husband
If there was a little room somewhere in the British Museum that contained only about twenty exhibits and good lighting, easy chairs, and a notice imploring you to smoke, I believe I should become a museum man.Collection: Believe