Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Philip Larkin
Age: 63 †
Born: 1922
Born: August 9
Died: 1985
Died: December 2
Critic
Journalist
Librarian
Music Critic
Music Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Philip Arthur Larkin
Life
Sense
Across
Others
Lived
Might
Difference
Nothing
Loved
Sweeps
Done
Differences
Sleeps
Mean
Sleep
Cures
Make
Everyone
According
Love
Means
Loving

More quotes by Philip Larkin

Image
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
Image
I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
Image
Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
Philip Larkin
Image
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Philip Larkin
Image
On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
Philip Larkin
Image
Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
Philip Larkin
Image
To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Philip Larkin
Image
The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It's more like a desire to separate a piece of one's experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.
Philip Larkin
Image
One of the sadder things, I think, Is how our birthdays slowly sink: Presents and parties disappear, The cards grow fewer year by year, Till, when one reaches sixty-five, How many care we're still alive?
Philip Larkin
Image
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
Image
I have wished you something None of the others would.
Philip Larkin
Image
I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
Philip Larkin
Image
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
Image
There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
Philip Larkin
Image
The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
Philip Larkin
Image
What are days for? Days are where we live.
Philip Larkin
Image
I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.
Philip Larkin
Image
I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear.
Philip Larkin
Image
Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
Philip Larkin
Image
The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin