Philip Larkin quotes

I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
-- Philip Larkin

#Enemy

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death- Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.
-- Philip Larkin

#Running #Eye #Solitude

I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action
-- Philip Larkin

#Strong #Feelings #Vanishing

How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.
-- Philip Larkin

#Lying #Careers #Littles

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

#Growing Up #Children #Simple

I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any - after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?
-- Philip Larkin

#Writing #Thinking #People

What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. Theyare to be happy in: Where can we live but days?
-- Philip Larkin

#Time

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

#People #Trying #Feels

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

I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.
-- Philip Larkin

#Writing #Sleep #Organization

What will survive of us is love.
-- Philip Larkin

#Romantic #Death #Inspirational Love

Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
-- Philip Larkin

#Practice

Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
-- Philip Larkin

#Writing #Modern #Ends

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

Something, like nothing, happens anywhere.
-- Philip Larkin

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.
-- Philip Larkin

#Poetry #Wordsworth #Deprivation

Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.
-- Philip Larkin

#Writing #Kind #Fantasy

...the breath that sharpens life is life itself...
-- Philip Larkin

#Life Is

I didn't choose poetry: poetry chose me.
-- Philip Larkin

As a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like.
-- Philip Larkin

#Children #Grew #Hated

You can't put off being young until you retire.
-- Philip Larkin

#Retirement #Young #Retiring

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
-- Philip Larkin

#Writing #Pity

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit, Whatever they are....
-- Philip Larkin

#Girl #Dream #Women

Walk with the dead For fear of death.
-- Philip Larkin

#Death #Fear Of Death #Walks

Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments....
-- Philip Larkin

#Home #England #Excuse

The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough....
-- Philip Larkin

#Love #Selfish #Enough

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

#Earth #Mess

Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
-- Philip Larkin

#Simple #Joy #Feels

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

#Freedom #Ties #Self

... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
-- Philip Larkin

#Freedom #Long #Slides

Clearly money has something to do with life....
-- Philip Larkin

#Money

Many famous feet have trod Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed The strength they have against the strength they need; And famous lips interrogated God Concerning franchise in eternity....
-- Philip Larkin

#Greatness #Hands #Feet

Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
-- Philip Larkin

#Memories #Chance

To put one brick upon another, Add a third, and then a fourth, Leaves no time to wonder whether What you do has any worth.
-- Philip Larkin

#Work #Bricks #Add

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

Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
-- Philip Larkin

#Love #Suits #Vicious

I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear....
-- Philip Larkin

#Fear #Dawn