English Journey Quotes

“Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests;... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press; ... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world."
J.B. Priestley in English Journey (referring to football), published in 1934.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“I was quietly sinking into that mood of not unpleasant melancholy that comes to a man alone in a strange dark town.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“There Bath spread herself before us, like a beautiful dowager giving a reception. Bath, like Edinburgh, has the rare trick of surprising you all over again. You know very well it is like that, yet somehow your memory must have diminished the wonder of it, for there it is, taking your breath away again. There is a further mystery about Bath – which Edinburgh does not share – for I have never been able to imagine who lives in those rows and rows of houses really intended for Sheridan and Jane Austen characters. They all seem to be occupied; life is busy behind those perfect façades; but who are the people, where do they come from, what do they do? As our stay there, on this journey, only lasted for about two minutes, I did nothing to settle this question, though my mind played with it again as we rolled away from these Palladian heights.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“I have never met members of that House (of Commons) without feeling that they simply belong to a rather amusing, rowdy club in Westminster.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“We could drink to the tragedy of the dead; but we could only stare at one another, in pitiful embarrassment, over this tragi-comedy of the living, who had fought for a world that did not want them, who had come back to exchange their uniforms for rags. And who shall restore to them the years that the locust hath eaten?”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“Consider how artful the guardian spirits of this region have been. They would not allow it to be drawn into the ugly scramble for quick profits, and so have kept its charm intact, its beauty unravaged; but when they have found it needing money, they have laid their spell upon rich men from the black holes of industry and, by showing them a manor house lacking a tenant, a village wanting a patron, have conjured the money out of them; so that many a prospect here is unspoiled and exquisite because of the muck and sweat of Birmingham and Manchester. There’s the real magic for you, and I watched it at work.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“My eccentric but charming friend of the fantastic manor house, who lives an antique dream of life supported by an unearned income, cannot possibly be counted as a hand on deck. Would there be any justification for such an existence in any rational economic system? The answer is obviously: none whatever. It would be very easy to denounce and dismiss this leisured gentleman and all his toys in a few sentences, and there are thinkers I admire who would not hesitate to do it. But I cannot bring myself to do it. The system, however rational it may be, must somehow be stretched to fit him in, manor house, museum, hotch-potch, toy village and all. I am glad he is at play under those crazy roofs, in that green cup among the hills, and would not have him sent to clerk in the gas-works or draw plans for communal garages.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“We nosed our way ponderously through Bradford-on-Avon, which is very different from the other Bradford where I was born and nurtured. Bradford-on-Avon is all quaint, whereas in the other Bradford there is nothing quaint, except perhaps the entire population.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“England, even now, is still the country of local government, local politics, strong local interests, and only the newspaper written and published in the immediate neighbourhood can deal adequately with such government, politics, and interests.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“We may be under fifty different national flags, but we are compelled to serve now under only one economic flag.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“They forget, these protesters, that both cities and the Sabbath were made for man. If the social arrangements do not fit in with the time-old desires of ordinary decent human nature, it is the social arrangements that should be changed.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey

“People are beginning to believe that government is a mysterious process with which they have no real concern. This is the soil in which autocracies flourish and liberty dies. Alongside that apathetic majority there will soon be a minority that is tired of seeing nothing vital happen and that will adopt any cause that promises decisive action. There are signs of this about already. If that majority does not waken up, it may find, too late, that it has taken, too many good things in English life for granted.”
― J.B. Priestley, English Journey: