Quote

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

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
Feels
Children
Thing
Life
Preserve
Preserves
Artist
Art
Feel

More quotes by 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
All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Philip Larkin
Image
I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear.
Philip Larkin
Image
Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
Philip Larkin
Image
Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
Philip Larkin
Image
There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
Philip Larkin
Image
He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
Philip Larkin
Image
My age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud.
Philip Larkin
Image
A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast: The rest is a desert full of bigots. That's what I think I'd like . . . a version of pastoral.
Philip Larkin
Image
Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
Philip Larkin
Image
Many famous feet have trod Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed The strength they have against the strength they need And famous lips interrogated God Concerning franchise in eternity.
Philip Larkin
Image
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
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
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
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
I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
Philip Larkin
Image
What are days for? Days are where we live.
Philip Larkin
Image
The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
Philip Larkin
Image
But, o, photography! as no art is,Faithful and disappointing! That recordsDull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,And will not censor blemishes,Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards
Philip Larkin
Image
Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.
Philip Larkin