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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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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
Quality
Vain
Expense
Spiritual
Mental
Normally
Human
Machines
Expenses
Humans
Fruit
Odds
Much
Victory
Represent
Think
Beginning
Qualities
Alignment
Thinking
Imagination
Rare
Victories
Quite
Machine
Separated
More quotes by Philip Larkin
... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
Philip Larkin
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Philip Larkin
And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
Philip Larkin
The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin
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
My age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud.
Philip Larkin
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
In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love.
Philip Larkin
One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
Philip Larkin
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
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Philip Larkin
Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
Philip Larkin
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
On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
Philip Larkin
Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
Philip Larkin
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
You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
Philip Larkin
He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
Philip Larkin
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
To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin
