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.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

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.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

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.

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.

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

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

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

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

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.