Quotes by Philip Larkin
They would not guess how early in Their supine stationary voyage The air would change to soundless damage....
For we have thought the longer thoughts And gone the shorter way. And we have danced to devil's tunes Shivering home to pray; I take you now and for always, For always is always now.
No one can tear your thread out of himself. No one can tie you down or set you free.
Now you become my boredom and my failure, Another way of suffering, a risk, A heavier-than-air hypostasis.
Whether they forget What they wanted first or not They tarnish at quiet anchor.
Death will be such another thing, All we have done not mattering.
At length to hospital This man was limited,...
For in the word death There is nothing to grasp; nothing to catch or claim;...
Frogmarched by old need They chaffer for a partner....
Dying smokers sense Walking towards them through some dappled park...
The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful...
Long since had the dead Become untroubled In the light soil.
If hands could you free you, heart, Where would you fly?
A decent chap, a real good sort, Straight as a die, one of the best,...
What you did, any of us might. And saying so I see our difference:...
Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me: "Why do you let me lie here wastefully?...
Surely, to think the lion's share Of happiness is found by couples sheer...
Oh, no one can deny That Arnold is less selfish than I. He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
At death, you break up: the bits that were you Start speeding away from each other for ever With no one to see.
Joy has no cause: Though cut to pieces with a knife,...
Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave...
Though living is a dreadful thing And a dreadful thing is it...
Never to walk from the station's lamps and laurels Carrying my father's lean old leather case...
A slight relax of air. All is not dead.
Books; china; a life Reprehensibly perfect.
