Quotes by Philip Larkin

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And dont have any kids yourself.

I had a moral tutor, but never saw him (the only words of his I remember are The three pleasures of life -drinking, smoking, and masturbation)

What are days for?Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over.They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days?Ah, solving that questionBrings the priest and the doctor In their long coatsRunning over the fields.

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.

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

MaturityA stationary sense . . . as, I suppose,I shall have, till my single body grows        Inaccurate, tired;Then I shall start to feel the backward pullTake over, sickening and masterful —         Some say, de

Its funny: one starts off thinking one is shrinkingly sensitive & intelligent & always one down & all the rest of it: then at thirty one finds one is a great clumping brute, incapable of appreciating anything finer than a kiss or a kick, roaring our ones hypocrisies at the top of ones voice, thick skinned as a rhino. At least I do.

MCMXIVThose long uneven linesStanding as patientlyAs if they were stretched outsideThe Oval or Villa Park,The crowns of hats, the sunOn moustached archaic facesGrinning as if it were allAn August Bank Holiday lark;And the shut shops, the bleachedEstablished names on the sunblinds,The farthings and sovereigns,And dark-clothed children at playCalled after kings and queens,The tin advertisementsFor cocoa and twist, and the pubsWide open all day--And the countryside not caring:The place names all hazed overWith flowering grasses, and fieldsShadowing Domesday linesUnder wheats restless silence;The differently-dressed servantsWith tiny rooms in huge houses,The dust behind limousines;Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriages,Lasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.

An Arundel TombSide by side, their faces blurred,The earl and countess lie in stone,Their proper habits vaguely shownAs jointed armour, stiffened pleat,And that faint hint of the absurd -The little dogs under their feet.Such plainness of the pre-BaroqueHardly involves the eye, untilIt meets his left-hand gauntlett, stillClasped empty in the other, andOne sees with a sharp tender shockHis hand withdrawn, holding her hand.They would not think to lie so long,Such faithfulness in effigyWas just a detail friends would see,A sculptors sweet commissioned graceThrown off in helping to prolongThe Latin names around the base.They would not guess how early inTheir supine stationary voyageThe air would change to soundless damage,Turn the old tenantry away;How soon succeeding eyes beingTo look, not read. Rigidly, theyPersisted, linked, through lengths and breadthsOf time. Snow fell, undated. LightEach summer thronged the grass. A brightLitter of birdcalls strewed the sameBone-littered ground. And up the pathsThe endless altered people cameWashing at their identity.Now helpless in the hollowOf an unarmorial age, a troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeinsAbove their scrap of history,Only an attitude remains.Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon and to proveOur almost-instinct almost-true:What will survive of us is love.

You cant put off being young until you retire.

“Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP.”

“Saki says that youth is like hors doeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you dont notice it. When youve had them, you wish youd had more hors doeuvres.”

“There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isnt true!”

“Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.”

“Im terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I do anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on times - it doesnt of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesnt matter if youve done anything or not.”

“Dear, I cant write, its all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.”

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if youre an artist, by children if youre not.”

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

“Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.”

“Most things may never happen: this one will.”