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One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.

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
Great
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Thing
Poets
Criticism
Poet
Poetry
Literature
Another
Past

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.
Philip Larkin
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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
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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.
Philip Larkin
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It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.
Philip Larkin
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Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
Philip Larkin
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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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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
Philip Larkin
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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
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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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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Philip Larkin
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Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.
Philip Larkin
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin
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And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
Philip Larkin
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It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
Philip Larkin
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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
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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
Philip Larkin
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As a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like.
Philip Larkin
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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
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
Philip Larkin
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin