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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

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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
Lasts
Last
Left
Home
Back
Stays
Shaped
Comfort
Winning

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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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
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Clearly money has something to do with life.
Philip Larkin
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
Philip Larkin
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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
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Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
Philip Larkin
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
Philip Larkin
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I am beginning to think of the human 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
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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
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This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
Philip Larkin
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He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
Philip Larkin
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin
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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
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Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
Philip Larkin
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Philip Larkin
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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
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We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
Philip Larkin
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
Philip Larkin
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One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the dame day as we do ourselves.
Philip Larkin
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
Philip Larkin
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
Philip Larkin