Philip Larkin: Thing

Philip Larkin was English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian. Explore interesting quotes on thing.
Philip Larkin: 84   quotes 2   likes

“Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are”

Philip Larkin

Required Writing-Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 Farrar Strauss 1984
Context: Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are, to recreate the familiar, eternalizing the poet's own perception in unique and original verbal form.

“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.”

Philip Larkin
Pain , Housing

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.”

Philip Larkin

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Life , Children , Art , Feeling

“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.”

Philip Larkin

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Life , Feeling , Sense , Strong

“I am always trying to 'preserve' things by getting other people to read what I have written, and feel what I felt.”

Philip Larkin

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

People , Feeling , Reading

“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.”

Philip Larkin

“If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I'm convinced, don't think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they're carried out feet first.”

Philip Larkin

Source: Letter to J.B.Sutton 30 October 1949

Life , People , Business , Support