Philip Larkin Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I am always trying to 'preserve' things by getting other people to read what I have written, and feel what I felt.

  Philip Larkin

  Always Trying, People, Feels

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, Faber & Faber

  16 Copy quote

• The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.

  Philip Larkin

  Work, Unemployment, Benefits

  7 Copy quote

• I wonder love can have already set
  In dreams, when we've not met
  More times than I can number on one hand.

  Philip Larkin

  Love, Dream, Hands

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.25, Faber & Faber

  16 Copy quote

• The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

  Philip Larkin

  Grief, Years, Tree

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Poesía reunida”, p.217, LUMEN

  4 Copy quote

• One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the dame day as we do ourselves.

  Philip Larkin

  Dames, Life Is, Quirks

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, Faber & Faber

  25 Copy quote

• I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.

  Philip Larkin

  Thinking, Subversive, Cushions

  8 Copy quote

• Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
  Whatever they are.

  Philip Larkin

  Girl, Dream, Women

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.162, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back

  Philip Larkin

  Home, Winning, Comfort

  Philip Larkin (2012). “The Whitsun Weddings”, p.14, Faber & Faber

  12 Copy quote

• No one can tear your thread out of himself.
  No one can tie you down or set you free.

  Philip Larkin

  Freedom, Self, Ties

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.154, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

  Philip Larkin

  Attitude, Age, Finals

  19 Copy quote

• Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.

  Philip Larkin

  Thinking, Wish, Next

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, Faber & Faber

  17 Copy quote

• Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock.

  Philip Larkin

  Dream, Book, Finals

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.144, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• One of the sadder things, I think,
  Is how our birthdays slowly sink:
  Presents and parties disappear,
  The cards grow fewer year by year,
  Till, when one reaches sixty-five,
  How many care we're still alive?

  Philip Larkin

  Party, Thinking, Years

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.176, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Things are tougher than we are, just
  As earth will always respond
  However we mess it about.

  Philip Larkin

  Earth, Mess

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.119, Faber & Faber

  28 Copy quote

• I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

  Philip Larkin

  Night, Drunk, Half

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin Poems: Selected by Martin Amis”, p.92, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.

  Philip Larkin

  Children, Growing Up, Simple

  13 Copy quote

• I have wished you something None of the others would.

  Philip Larkin

  Philip Larkin (2012). “The Less Deceived”, p.16, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• Here is an unfenced existance

  Philip Larkin

  11 Copy quote

• I am beginning to think of the human imagination as a fruit machine on which victories are rare and separated by much vain expense, and represent a rare alignment of mental and spiritual qualities that normally are quite at odds.

  Philip Larkin

  Spiritual, Thinking, Odds

  4 Copy quote

• I like spaghetti because you don't have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it's all the same.

  Philip Larkin

  Food, Book, Eye

  12 Copy quote

• A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast: The rest is a desert full of bigots. That's what I think I'd like . . . a version of pastoral.

  Philip Larkin

  Thinking, America, East

  4 Copy quote

• Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.

  Philip Larkin

  Writing, Novel, Deeper

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982”, p.57, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.

  Philip Larkin

  Mind, China, If I Could

  Philip Larkin (1989). “Philip Larkin: the man and his work”, Univ of Iowa Pr

  4 Copy quote

• To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

  Philip Larkin

  Feels, Incompetent, New Places

  Letter to Winifred Arnott, October 7, 1953.

  5 Copy quote

• In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.

  Philip Larkin

  Mean, Sleep, Loving Life

  Philip Larkin (2012). “The Whitsun Weddings”, p.12, Faber & Faber

  17 Copy quote

Page 3 of 6

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin