Jb Priestley Quotes

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

I fancy that the Hell of Too Many People would occupy a respectable place in the hierarchy of infernal regions. ~ J.B. Priestley

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

They all - Malcolm with his houses, Willem with his girlfriends, JB with his paints, he with his razors - sought comfort, something that was theirs alone, something to hold off the terrifying largeness, the impossibility, of the world, of the relentlessness of its minutes, its hours, its days. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be. ~ J.B. Priestley

I don't want to be rich. I'm not interested in money. Well, not money for the sake of it. I just want more life than Mother and Father want. Don't you ever want more? - Frank ~ Chris Priestley

The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of the troubled and frothy surface.
[Alluding to Joseph Priestley's Observations on Air] ~ Edmund Burke

A loving wife will do anything for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him. ~ J.B. Priestley

What a grand, higgledy-piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is! ~ J.B. Priestley

12:16 Esteem everyone with the same respect; no one is more important than the other. Associate yourself rather with the lowly than with the lofty. Do not distance yourself from others in your own mind. ("Take a real interest in ordinary people." - JB Phillips) ~ Francois Du Toit

You can't get back the time in the past. You can't change it. You can only make sure to learn and move forward. ~ J.B. McGee

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness. ~ J.B. Priestley

Our dourest parsons, who followed the nonconformist fashion of long extemporary prayers, always seemed to me to be bent on bullying God. ~ J.B. Priestley

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. ~ J.B. Priestley

Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process. ~ Joseph Priestley

To love to teach is one thing, to love those you teach is another. ~ J.B. Priestley

Both the fanatical believers and the fixed attitude people are loud in their scorn of what they call "woolly minds." ... [But it] is the woolly mind that combines scepticism about everything with credulity about everything. Being woolly it has no hard edges. It is easy, pliant, yet it has its own toughness. Because it bends, it does not break. ... The woolly mind realizes that we live in an unimaginable gigantic, complicated, mysterious universe. To try to stuff the vast bewildering creation into a few neat pigeon-holes is absurd. We don't know enough, and to pretend we do is mere intellectual conceit. ... The best we can do is keep looking out for clues, for anything that will light us a step or two in the dark. ~ 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

On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. ~ Will Durant

Is this her death I'm looking at? Or her life? And which is worse? ~ Chris Priestley

It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting. ~ Joseph Priestley, 1733-1804

The English novelist J. B. Priestley once said that if he were an American, he would make the final test of whatever men chose to do in art, business, or politics a comparison with the Grand Canyon. He believed that whatever was false and ephemeral would be exposed for what it was when set against that mass of geology and light. Priestley was British, but he had placed his finger on an abiding American truth: the notion that the canyon stands as one of our most important touchstones - a kind of roofless tabernacle whose significance is both natural and national. It is our cathedral in the desert, and the word our is key because although the canyon belongs to the entire world, we, as Americans, belong particularly to it. ~ Kevin Fedarko

JB would ask them when Malcolm was anxious about something, but he knew: he was worried because to be alive was to worry. Life was scary; it was unknowable. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

In my confused state I wondered if I had not died and gone to hell. And if this was the case, I wished that I had been allowed more opportunities to sin, for this seemed a rather excessive judgement on what had been a frankly dull and blameless life. But I was not dead. I could see that now. ~ Chris Priestley

I miss my boats, and I miss having the ability to be out on the water during the daytime and then go skiing at night. ~ Jason Priestley

Joanna Priestley is one of the most interesting and adept personal animators and filmmakers. I have enjoyed her work for years and been amazed at how she gets into her own thoughts onto the screen in a very elegant and focused way. You have to see this. ~ Gus Van Sant

In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others of which we could have no idea before, so that we cannot solve one doubt without creating several new ones. ~ Joseph Priestley

Nothing scares me, because I used to think I was indestructible. Now I know I'm indestructible, not to mention my spine is indestructible. It's all titanium. ~ Jason Priestley

Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made. ~ Claude Bernard

Reviews on Goodreads and Amazon are like crack for authors. Feed your favorite writer's habit today! ~ Sabine Priestley

The point is to be good-to be sensitive and sincere. ~ J.B. Priestley

The thought of seeing Malcolm and JB, of interacting with them and smiling and joking, seemed suddenly excruciating. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Too many christians have been chargeable with ... confounding the Logos of Plato with that of John , and making of it a second person in the trinity, than which no two things can be more different. ~ Joseph Priestley

For scientific discovery, give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton ~ Raymond Priestley

I have always been a grumbler. I am designed for the part - sagging face, weighty underlip, rumbling, resonant voice. Money couldn't buy a better grumbling outfit. ~ J.B. Priestley

You never appreciate your anonymity until you don't have it anymore. ~ Jason Priestley

The wisdom of one generation will be folly in the next. ~ Joseph Priestley

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate. ~ J.B. Priestley

Hey Bieber, I had the initials JB first.. Where's my 15%? ~ Jack Barakat

Why is it childish to want something better? asked Frank sulkily. It's like pretending to be content is the same as actually being content. I'm not going to pre tent. - Frank ~ Chris Priestley

[The doctrine of air] I was led into in consequence of inhabiting a house adjoining to a public brewery, where I at first amused myself with making experiments on the fixed air [carbon dioxide] which I found ready made in the process of fermentation . When I removed from that house I was under the necessity of making the fixed air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the purpose, but of the cheapest kind. ~ Joseph Priestley

Ideas come from all over the place – a lifetime of reading and watching films and TV helps of course. I play around with thoughts of what creeps me out and hope that it will creep my reader out too. ~ Chris Priestley