Quote

This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.

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
Time
Echoes
Wood
Woods
Understood
Within
Firsts
First
Thing
Echo

More quotes by Philip Larkin

Image
Clearly money has something to do with life.
Philip Larkin
Image
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
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
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Philip Larkin
Image
Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
Philip Larkin
Image
We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
Philip Larkin
Image
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
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
SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
Philip Larkin
Image
Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous, Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water, Is earth's most multiple, excited daughter And those she has least use for see her best, Their paths grown craven and circuitous, Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.
Philip Larkin
Image
What are days for? Days are where we live.
Philip Larkin
Image
Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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
The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.
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
I have wished you something None of the others would.
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
I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
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
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