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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.

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
Practice
Living
Live
Life

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Philip Larkin
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And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
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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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
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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
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Philip Larkin
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
Philip Larkin
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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
Philip Larkin
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
Philip Larkin
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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
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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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Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
Philip Larkin
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I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.
Philip Larkin
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It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
Philip Larkin
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Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.
Philip Larkin
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Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.
Philip Larkin
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Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
Philip Larkin