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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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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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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Life is first boredom, then fear.
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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
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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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 write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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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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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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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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One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the dame day as we do ourselves.
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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
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I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
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