Philip Larkin was an English poet, librarian, novelist and a jazz critic best known for his poems and novels. His first book of poetry was ‘The North Ship’, and two novels named ‘Jill’ and ‘A Girl in Winter’. However, his work gained prominence with a collection of poems ‘The Less Deceived’ which were followed by The ‘Whitsun Weddings’ and ‘High Windows’. Larkin was a graduated from the University of Oxford with English language and Literature. After graduation Larkin became a librarian and worked as the university librarian at the University of Hull. During his tenure as a librarian for 30 years, Larkin produced most of his significant works. He was criticized for including no to minimal feelings in his poems. However, Larkin continued his unique style of poems that were highly structured but surprisingly flexible which he is known for now. Larkin was known for being a no-nonsense, solitary Englishman who disliked fame and had no patience for the rising trend of attracting public attention by other writers of his era. Here are some notable quotes by Philip Larkin.
So many things I had thought forgotten
Return to my mind with stranger pain:
Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the house so many years ago.
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.
I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action.
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Philip Larkin
Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith, and we
Divide.
The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke...
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
Philip Larkin
SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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.
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
From The Mower
Philip Larkin
If I looked into your face / expecting a word or a laugh on the old conditions, / it would not be a friend who met my eye
And I am sick for want of sleep;
So sick, that I can half-believe
The soundless river pouring from the cave
Is neither strong nor deep;
Only an image fancied in conceit.
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.
I came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of research was needed to form an opinion on anything, and therefore abandoned politics altogether as a topic of conversation.
It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.
Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.
He [Llewelyn Powys] has always in mind the great touchstone Death & consequently life is always judged as how far it fits us, or compensates us, for ultimately dying.
Living toys are something novel,
But it soon wears off somehow.
Philip Larkin
Ought we to smile / Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats / You're best alone. Friendship is not worth while.
Philip Larkin
Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence.
In her wake
No waters breed or break.
Philip Larkin
Earth never grieves, I thought, walking across the park, watching seagulls cruising greedily above the ground looking for heaven knows what. Don't you think it's a good line? A very good line
I suppose if one lives to be old, one's entire waking life will be spent turning on the spit of recollection over the fires of mingled shame, pain or remorse. Cheerful prospect!
 between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP. )
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