Quote

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?

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
Still
Grow
Sixty
Many
Grows
Parties
Years
Alive
Fewer
Things
Year
Slowly
Birthdays
Think
Five
Aging
Sadder
Thinking
Party
Cards
Reaches
Stills
Till
Presents
Care
Disappear
Sink

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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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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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back
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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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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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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
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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.
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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.
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Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
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I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
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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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Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
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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.
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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.
Philip Larkin