“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.””
“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.””
“Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.””
“We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.””
“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.””
“To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness.””
J. B. PriestleyJohn Boynton Priestley was an influential English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and social commentator whose works often explored themes of social responsibility and the human condition. Born in...
“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?””
“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.””
“Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness”
“But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only cross-sections of our real selves. What we are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be - the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.””
“To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.””
“The way to write a book is the application of the seat of one's pants to the seat of one's chair””
“I was surrounded, and often enchanted, it appeared, by nothings.””
“Time's only a kind of dream, Kay. If it wasn't, it would have to destroy everything”
“She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.””
“No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolationcreeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his innerworld, the writer must live with hope, work in faith””
“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.””
“A grey tide, engulfing all colour and shape of things that had been or were to be, rushed across his mind, sweeping the life out of everything and leaving him all hollow inside. Once again he sat benumbed in a shadow show. Yet as ever”
“Time must be tracked down in the inner world ... It is one of the peculiarities of Time that it is intensely private and yet also widely shared.””