Philip Larkin Quotes

95 Sourced Quotes

Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

Philip Larkin
Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous,
Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water,
Is earth's most multiple, excited daughter;
And those she has least use for see her best,
Their paths grown craven and circuitous,
Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.

Philip Larkin
My age fallen away like white swaddling
Floats in the middle distance, becomes
An inhabited cloud.

Philip Larkin
I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.

Philip Larkin
Give me a thrill, says the reader,
Give me a kick;
I don't care how you succeed, or
What subject you pick.

Philip Larkin
Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

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

Philip Larkin
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can't escape, Yet can't accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

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

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

Philip Larkin
It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.

Philip Larkin
All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives,

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

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

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

Philip Larkin
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
I am beginning to think of the creative 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
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

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

Philip Larkin
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat.

Philip Larkin
The notion of expressing sentiments in short lines having similar sounds at their ends seems as remote as mangoes on the moon.

Philip Larkin
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.

Philip Larkin
Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital
In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning.
Selfishness is like listening to good jazz
With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.

Philip Larkin
I have just farted with the sound of an iron ruler twanging in a desk-lid and the smell of a west wind over a decaying patch of red cabbages.

Philip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Philip Larkin