Philip Larkin Quotes
When getting my nose in a bookCured most things short of school,It was worth ruining my eyesTo know ...
Show MoreRather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the d...
Show MoreMan hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't ...
Show MoreWhen I throw back my head and howlPeople (women mostly) sayBut you've always done what you want, You...
Show MoreSeriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, becaus...
Show MoreI had a moral tutor, but never saw him (the only words of his I remember are 'The three pleasures of...
Show MoreI'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' an...
Show Morehe [Llewelyn Powys] has always in mind the great touchstone Death & consequently life is always judg...
Show MoreHow little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really...
Show MoreOne of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the same day as we do our...
Show MoreIt's funny: one starts off thinking one is shrinkingly sensitive & intelligent & always one down & a...
Show MoreI seem to walk on a transparent surface and see beneath me all the bones and wrecks and tentacles th...
Show MoreWork is a kind of vacuum, an emptiness, where I just switch off everything except the scant intellig...
Show MoreIn life, as in art, talking vitiates doing.
You know, I know I should be just as panicky as you about the filthy work - one wants to do nothing ...
Show MoreI feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by childr...
Show MoreMorning, noon & bloody night,Seven sodding days a week,I slave at filthy WORK, that mightBe done by ...
Show MoreHow hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left ...
Show MoreOften one spends weeks trying to write a poem out of the conscious mind that never comes to anything...
Show MoreThe poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use t...
Show MoreSaki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't ...
Show MoreEmpty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connoll...
Show MoreThere is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very stra...
Show MoreI am always trying to 'preserve' things by getting other people to read what I have written, and fee...
Show MoreDear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.
Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.
What do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this? Do they somehow supposeIt's m...
Show MoreIf grief could burn outLike a sunken coal,The heart would rest quiet, The unrent soulBe still as a v...
Show MoreWhat will survive of us is love.
An Arundel TombSide by side, their faces blurred,The earl and countess lie in stone,Their proper hab...
Show MoreStrange to know nothing, never to be sureOf what is true or right or real,But forced to qualify or s...
Show MoreLoneliness clarifies. Here silence standsLike heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flow...
Show Morelife is first boredom, then fear.whether or not we use it, it goes,and leaves what something hidden ...
Show MoreSex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
Maiden Name Marrying left your maiden name disused. Its five light sounds no longer mean your face, ...
Show MoreYou can't put off being young until you retire.
Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighb...
Show MoreMCMXIVThose long uneven linesStanding as patientlyAs if they were stretched outsideThe Oval or Villa...
Show MoreTime has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir fina...
Show MoreSo many things I had thought forgottenReturn to my mind with stranger pain:Like letters that arrive ...
Show MoreMost things may never happen: this one will.
MaturityA stationary sense . . . as, I suppose,I shall have, till my single body grows Inaccu...
Show MoreOnly in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock....
Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving t...
Show MoreI'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems
Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.
SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
Caught in the center of a soundless fieldWhile hot inexplicable hours go byWhat trap is this? Where ...
Show MoreI think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
The Old FoolsWhat do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this ? Do they somehow...
Show MoreI have wished you something None of the others would....
Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) between the end of t...
Show MorePoetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.
Uncontradicting solitudeSupports me on its giant palm;And like a sea-anemoneOr simple snail, there c...
Show MoreWhat are days for?Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over.They are to be ...
Show MoreThe mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I foundA hedgehog jammed up against the blades,Killed. It had be...
Show MoreWe should be carefulOf each other, we should be kindWhile there is still time
When I was a child, I thought,Casually, that solitudeNever needed to be sought.Something everybody h...
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