quotes from classic

Far too many relied on the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle, and an end.

more quotes from Philip Larkin

I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any-after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?

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You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like Finnegans Wake and Picasso.

more quotes from Philip Larkin

The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.

more quotes from Philip Larkin

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

more quotes from Philip Larkin

Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.

more quotes from Philip Larkin

I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

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Human beings must be known to be loved but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

more quotes from Pascale Petit

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one!"

more quotes from Clive Staples Lewis

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

more quotes from Clive Staples Lewis

Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

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What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

more quotes from Clive Staples Lewis

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

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The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

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Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

more quotes from Clive Staples Lewis

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

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Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

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The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

more quotes from Clive Staples Lewis

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

more quotes from Clive Staples Lewis

Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please will you do the job for me."

more quotes from Clive Staples Lewis