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Philip Larkin Quotes

1922–1985 England

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist and librarian.

England
Academics
Librarians
Novelists
Poets

Also known as: Larkin, Philip, This Be The Verse

Random Philip Larkin quote

43 quotes

I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.

The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.

The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

I search myself for illusions like a monkey looking for fleas.

But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?

The Less Deceived (1955)

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

The Less Deceived (1955)

Some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end.

The Less Deceived (1955)

Marriage, well. I think of it as a marvellous thing for other people, like going to the stake.

Don’t read too much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who’s yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.

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

Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

The Less Deceived (1955)

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

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.

The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can't quite name.

High Windows (1974)

Novels are about other people and poems are about yourself

Required Writing (1983)

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are, to recreate the familiar, eternalizing the poet's own perception in unique and original verbal form.

Required Writing (1983)

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise—
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it's chess.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Philip Larkin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.