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

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

More quotes by Philip Larkin

Image
I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.
Philip Larkin
Image
Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
Philip Larkin
Image
Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.
Philip Larkin
Image
On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
Philip Larkin
Image
I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear.
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
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
I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
Philip Larkin
Image
Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
Philip Larkin
Image
This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
Philip Larkin
Image
Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
Philip Larkin
Image
One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
Philip Larkin
Image
When I get sent manuscripts from aspiring poets, I do one of two things: if there is no stamped self-addressed envelope, I throw it into the bin.-If there is, I write and tell them to f**k off.
Philip Larkin
Image
Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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
I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.
Philip Larkin
Image
And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
Philip Larkin
Image
There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
Philip Larkin
Image
Things are tougher than we are, just As earth will always respond However we mess it about.
Philip Larkin
Image
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.
Philip Larkin