“Get out as early as you can, / And don't have any kids yourself.”

— Philip Larkin, "This Be The Verse", High Windows (1974)

About Philip Larkin

1922 – 1985

English poet, author of "The Whitsun Weddings" and "High Windows".

“Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and having people in them, acting.”

“Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.”

“I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.”

“Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?"”

“Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!”

“It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval.”

“The only possible society is oneself.”

“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.”