
"Both Sides Now"
Songs
Variant: I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall,
I really don’t know clouds at all.
"Both Sides Now"
Songs
Variant: I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall,
I really don’t know clouds at all.
"Queen of the Black Coast" (1934)
Source: Conan the Barbarian Omnibus -The Original Stories
Context: He shrugged his shoulders. "I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."
Tales of Three Hemispheres http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/1/4/4/11440/11440-8.txt, A Shop In Go-By Street
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
“Did I choose this life of illusion? Don't be mad. My bed was made, I just lied in it.”
Source: In the Lake of The Woods (1994), p. 87
“The self really is an illusion—and realizing this is the basis of spiritual life.”
Sam Harris, Interview with The Minimalists (19 August 2014)
2010s