Quote

And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.

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
Butterfly
Summer
Case
Died
Cases
Rich
Looks
Butterflies
Settled

More quotes by Philip Larkin

Image
Clearly money has something to do with life.
Philip Larkin
Image
Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
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
It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
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
He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
Philip Larkin
Image
All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Philip Larkin
Image
It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.
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
Image
... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
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
Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
Philip Larkin
Image
I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear.
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
What are days for? Days are where we live.
Philip Larkin
Image
I have wished you something None of the others would.
Philip Larkin
Image
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
Image
The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
Philip Larkin
Image
In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love.
Philip Larkin
Image
Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
Philip Larkin