“The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.”
"Love Songs in Age" (1 January 1957)
The Whitsun Weddings (1964)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Philip Larkin 42
English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian 1922–1985Related quotes
“I had to fight so hard not to cry.”
Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
“Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard.”
Source: Love Is the Higher Law
Part II, p. 76
Written in Passy (1784), Ch. VI
The Autobiography (1818)
Interview in The Guardian, 25 January 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/25/broadcasting.bigbrother
“Love is a cure.
A promise, still so pure.”
Song lyrics
The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)
Context: He started off in a low voice, though you could hear every word. They say he could call on the harps of the blessed when he chose. And this was just as simple and easy as a man could talk. But he didn't start out by condemning or reviling. He was talking about the things that make a country a country, and a man a man.
And he began with the simple things that everybody's known and felt — the freshness of a fine morning when you're young, and the taste of food when you're hungry, and the new day that's every day when you're a child. He took them up and he turned them in his hands. They were good things for any man. But without freedom, they sickened. And when he talked of those enslaved, and the sorrows of slavery, his voice got like a big bell. He talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days. It wasn't a spread-eagle speech, but he made you see it. He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors.