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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

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
Art
Think
Thinking
Preserve
Preserves
Impulse
Bottom
Lies
Lying

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Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
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One of the sadder things, I think, Is how our birthdays slowly sink: Presents and parties disappear, The cards grow fewer year by year, Till, when one reaches sixty-five, How many care we're still alive?
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One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
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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.
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In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.
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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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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.
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We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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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.
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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
Philip Larkin
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
Philip Larkin
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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
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
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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