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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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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
Feet
Concerning
Path
Paths
Hands
Famous
Need
Lips
Many
Greatness
Interrogated
Needs
Eternity
Trod
Fame
Weighed
Strength
Franchise

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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
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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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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.
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Clearly money has something to do with life.
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Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.
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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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Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.
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This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
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The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It's more like a desire to separate a piece of one's experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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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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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
Philip Larkin
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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
Philip Larkin
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One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin
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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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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
Philip Larkin