Quote

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

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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
First
Leaves
Something
Goes
Life
Age
Whether
Use
Chose
Fear
Boredom
Ends
Hidden
Firsts
Aging

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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Clearly money has something to do with life.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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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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Walk with the dead For fear of death.
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Things are tougher than we are, just As earth will always respond However we mess it about.
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
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In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.
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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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All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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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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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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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
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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.
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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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You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
Philip Larkin
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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
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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