
I Asked a Thief
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)
The Historie of ane Nobil and Wailyeand Squyer, William Meldrum (1550), line 899
I Asked a Thief
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)
“Life passes by in a wink so try to never miss a moment of it.”
“To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both eyes, is easier than to think.”
Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 67; quoting William Cowper)
“Then let him swear he ne'er the lady knew,
And did with her as men with women do.”
Book XIX
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)
“Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.”
“Maybe that's what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.”
Letter to Alan Harrington (23 April 1949) published in Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 1 1940-1956 (1996)
Source: Selected Letters, 1940-1956
“Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Know what I mean?”