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

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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
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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?
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
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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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Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
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All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
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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.
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Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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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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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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.
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
Philip Larkin