Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighbours need whole parishfulsOf folk to do it on - in short,Our virtues are all social; if,Deprived of solitude, you chafe,It's clear you're not the virtuous sort. - Philip Larkin
I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems - Philip Larkin
Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock.... - Philip Larkin
So many things I had thought forgottenReturn to my mind with stranger pain:Like letters that arrive addressed to someoneWho left the house so many years ago. - Philip Larkin
Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off. - Philip Larkin
Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love. - Philip Larkin
Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes. - Philip Larkin
I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve. - Philip Larkin
SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles. - Philip Larkin
Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP. - Philip Larkin
Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriagesLasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again. - Philip Larkin