Quote

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

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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
Work
Proportion
Toad
Life
Soil
Toads
Bills
Squat
Drive
Brute
Six
Brutes
Pitchfork
Week
Wit
Pitchforks
Days
Paying
Soils
Use
Poison
Sickening

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There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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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.
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
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This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
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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.
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He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
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The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.
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Give me a thrill, says the reader, Give me a kick I don't care how you succeed, or What subject you pick.
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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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Clearly money has something to do with life.
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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.
Philip Larkin