J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM, was an English author, novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, social commentator, man of letters and broadcaster...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth13 September 1894
happiness smile laughter
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
good-night men blood
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.
revenge rivers yellow
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.
beautiful writing stills
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.
heart men house
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.
beauty years 50th-birthday
She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.
thinking two slang
I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.
school men style
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.
order fire sound
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.
reading important half
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.
feelings calling faces
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.
past people bovine
Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something bovine about them.
children keys hands
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.
real cutting hair
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.