Quote

I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.

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
Friends
Like
Enemies
Enemy

More quotes by Philip Larkin

Image
Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
Philip Larkin
Image
All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Philip Larkin
Image
Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
Philip Larkin
Image
As a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like.
Philip Larkin
Image
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? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison-- Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.
Philip Larkin
Image
The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
Philip Larkin
Image
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
Philip Larkin
Image
Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
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 think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.
Philip Larkin
Image
I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.
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
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Philip Larkin
Image
Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
Philip Larkin
Image
Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.
Philip Larkin
Image
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death- Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.
Philip Larkin
Image
I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
Image
The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin
Image
Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
Philip Larkin
Image
... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
Philip Larkin