Famous Quotes by Philip Larkin
- Curses? The dark? Struggling? Where’s the source
Of these yarns now (except in nightmares,... More
- At once whatever happened starts receding.
Panting, and back on board, we line the... More
- Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone... More
- They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to... More
- Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. More
- Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone.... More
- Rain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs.
Fast-running floors, collapsing into... More
- Such attics cleared of me! Such absences! More
- And girls you have to tell to pull their socks up
Are those whose pants you’d most like to... More
- All the familiar horrors we
Associate with others
Are coming fast along our way:
The... More
- Around, the night drops swiftly down
Its veils; does not condemn
Or praise the different... More
- Though living is a dreadful thing
And a dreadful thing is it
Life the niggard will not... More
- The trees stand in the setting sun,
I in their freckled shade
Regard the cavalcade of... More
- A good meal can somewhat repair
The eatings of slight love.... More
- Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children. More
- Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives. More
- I needs must turn
To know what prints I leave, whether of feet,
Or spoor of pads, or a... More
- My age fallen away like white swaddling
Floats in the middle distance, becomes
An... More
- Gull, grass and girl
In air, earth and bed
Join the long whirl
Of all the... More
- All catches alight
At the spread of spring:
Birds crazed with flight
Branches that... More
- Let the wheel spin out,
Till all created things
With shout and answering shout
Cast... More
- Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the... More
- The unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there
At last begin to loosen. More
- An April Sunday brings the snow
Making the blossom on the plum trees green,
Not white. An... More
- Behind the glass, under the cellophane,
Remains your final summer sweet
And meaningless,... More
- All men hesitate
Separately, always, seeing another year gone
Frockcoated gentleman,... More
- Leaves chase warm buses, speckle statued air,
Pile up in corners, fetch out vague broomed... More
- Apart, we think we wish ourselves together,
Yet sue for solitude upon our meetings.... More
- For in the word death
There is nothing to grasp; nothing to catch or claim;
Nothing to... More
- And the waves sing because they are moving.
And the waves sing above a cemetery of waters. More
- Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for... More
- Uneasy shifting resumes
As sterilisers steam
And the routine begins again
Of putting... More
- For this ignorance of me
Seems a kind of innocence.
Fast enough I shall wound it.... More
- Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes... More
- Or if, this night, happiness too is going. More
- And we, barely recalled from sleep there, sense
Arrivals lowing in a doleful... More
- Calling the traveller now, the outward bound:
O not for long, they cry, O not for long.... More
- Parting is a trailing streamer,
Lingering like leaves in autumn.... More
- As a war in years of peace
Or in war an armistice
Or a father’s death, just so
Our... More
- ... less and less of luck, and more and more
Of failure spreading back up the arm
Earlier... More
- A slight relax of air where cold was
And water trickles ... More
- A slight relax of air. All is not dead. More
- Shielded, what sorts of life are stirring yet:
Legs lagged like drains, slippers soft as... More
- Coral is set budding under seas,
Though none, O none sees what patterns it is making? More
- Planted deeper than roots,
This chiselled, flung-up faith
Runs and leaps against the... More
- Yet the wound, O see the wound
This petrified heart has taken,
Because, created... More
- Don’t read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the... More
- Almanacked, their names live; they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop... More
- Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. More
- Death quarrels, and shakes the tree,
And fears are flowers, and flowers are... More
- It was a green world,
Unchanging holly with the curled
Points, cypress and... More
- Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they... More
- At thirty-one, when some are rich
And others dead,
I, being neither, have a job instead.... More
- Another evening wasted! I begin
Writing the envelope, and a bitter smoke
Of... More
- I know, none better,
The eyelessness of days without a letter.... More
- Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the... More
- Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house. More
- This is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think... More
- That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die ... More
- I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I... More
- Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the... More
- Delay, well, travellers must expect
Delay. For how long? No one seems to know. More
- Ought we to smile,
Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats
You’re best alone.... More
- I feel staled,
Stupefied, by inaction and, as light
Begins to ebb outside, by fear; I... More
- O rain, o frost, so much has still to be cleared:
All this ripeness, all this reproachful... More
- The air deals blows: surely too hard, too often?
No: it is bent on bringing summer... More
- And the case of butterflies so rich it looks
As if all summer settled there and died. More
- We shall achingcold be here
Not singing.
Outside, the frost will bite, thaw, then... More
- Autumn has caught us in our summer wear.... More
- It was a gift that he possessed alone:
To look the world directly in the face;
The face... More
- “Interesting, but futile,” said his diary,
Where day by day his movements were... More
- Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It’s clear you’re... More
- Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
or... More
- Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would.... More
- In fact, may you be dull
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised,... More
- May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents.... More
- Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
Whatever they are.... More
- Such uncorrected visions end in church
Or registrar:
A mortgaged semi- with a silver... More
- Isolate city spread alongside water,
Posted with white towers, she keeps her... More
- ... this single span,
Reaching for the world, as our lives do,
As all lives do, reaching... More
- Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a... More
- Cascades of monumental slithering ... More
- A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are... More
- But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass,... More
- wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if... More
- Submission is the only good;
Let me become an instrument sharply stringed
For all things... More
- The walking of girls’ vulnerable feet,
The heart in its own endless silence kneeling. More
- Come then to prayers
And kneel upon the stone,
For we have tried
All courages on... More
- Down
The long shadows where undriven the dawn
Hunts light into nobility, arouse us noble. More
- Only our hearts go beating towards the east. More
- ... the darkness,
Inviting to this house
Air from a field, air from a salt grave ... More
- And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a... More
- The full moon travelling through her shepherdless fields. More
- Coming at last to night’s most thankful springs,
I meet a runner’s image.... More
- Unhindered in the dingy wards
Lives flicker out, one here, one there.... More
- Better that endless notes beseech
As many nights, as many dawns,
If finally God grants... More
- A bunch of horsemen curtly asked his name,
Their leader in a different dialect stated
A... More
- Continuing to live that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries
Is nearly always... More
- This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise ... More
- Thinking in terms of one
Is easily done.... More
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