Quotes & Sayings About Recurrence

And you, fallen Wendy, eviscerated by the eternal recurrence of it all, hear Peter snarl at you for growing guilty and big and old... — Richard Powers

An inference of perspective,
a glimpse of regularity,
causation of habit,
and the only recurrence:
my faith in you. — Camilo Garzon

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.77 — Slavoj Zizek

It was a night replaying its corrosive recurrence on the road of our lives, on the road which was hungry for great transformations. — Ben Okri

The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. — Frederick Douglass

Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do ... I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer. — Woody Allen

Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year of being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same House of Being is built. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In every Now, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If you are newly diagnosed, experiencing a recurrence, or caring for someone with brain cancer, I urge you to dig in, carry on, and fortify yourself with the knowledge that personal growth may, in fact, be obtained throughout this challenge. When — Mindy Elwell

Happiness is only to be found in a recurrence to the principles of human nature; and these will prompt very simple measures. — Benjamin Disraeli

For anyone addicted to reading commonplace books ... finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria, with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams ... — M.F.K. Fisher

But is eternity an alternative to life? Isn't it, on the contrary, the case that it is when one wants everything to be eternal that one most loves life and the world. — Alexander Nehamas

Every evening the girls of the house gathered about me on the mats, and after chasing away Kory-Kory from my side - who nevertheless, retired only to a little distance and watched their proceedings with the most jealous attention - would anoint my whole body with a fragrant oil, squeezed from a yellow root, previously pounded between a couple of stones, and which in their language is denominated 'aka'. And most refreshing and agreeable are the juices of the 'aka', when applied to ones, limbs by the soft palms of sweet nymphs, whose bright eyes are beaming upon you with kindness; and I used to hail with delight the daily recurrence of this luxurious operation, in which I forgot all my troubles, and buried for the time every feeling of sorrow. Sometimes — Herman Melville

Nevertheless, some free time remains. What's to be done? How do you use your time? In dedicating yourself to helping people? But basically other people don't interest you. Listening to records? That used to be a solution, but as the years go by you have to say that music moves you less and less. Taken in its widest sense, a spot of do-it-yourself can be a way out. But the fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments when your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end all combine to plunge you into a state of real suffering. And yet you haven't always wanted to die. You — Michel Houellebecq

Life is dappled with periods of pain, and for some of us is suffused with it. Inthe course of ordinary living, the pain is mitigated by periods of peace and times of joy. In dying, however, there is only the affliction. Its brief respite and ebbs are known always to be fleeting and soon succeeded by a recurrence of the travail. The peace, and sometimes the joy, that may come occurs with the release. In this sense, there is often a serenity - sometimes even a dignity - in the act of death, but rarely in the process of dying. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Woe entreats: Go! Away, woe! But all that suffers wants to live, that it may become ripe and joyous and longing- longing for what is farther, higher, brighter. "I want heirs"- thus speaks all that suffers; "I want children; I do not want myself".
Joy, however, does not want heirs, or children- joy wants itself, wants eternity, wants recurrence, wants everything eternally the same. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Teaching emotional intelligence skills to people with life-threatening illnesses has been shown to reduce the rate of recurrence, shrink recovery times, and lower death rates. — Travis Bradberry

For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell. — Michael Ondaatje

If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. — Alice Meynell

Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away,and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place. — Samuel Johnson

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner ... and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth. — W.E.B. Du Bois

By taking the time to focus on our mental and emotional well-being, we can minimize our triggers and reduce the likelihood of a recurrence. — Sarah Hackley

The recurrence during the eighteenth century Enlightenment of the aspiration to be the 'Newton of the moral sciences' testifies to the prestige not just of celestial mechanics, but of the 'experimental method' more generally. — Stefan Collini

In conclusion, I would like to point out the grave risk authorities are taking by burying the Carrie White affair under the bureaucratic mat - and I am speaking specifically of the so-called White Commission. The desire among politicians to regard TK as a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon seems very strong, and while this may be understandable it is not acceptable. The possibility of a recurrence, genetically speaking, is 99 per cent. It's time we planned now for what may be ... — Stephen King

Architecture, either practically considered or viewed as an art of taste, is a subject so important and comprehensive in itself, that volumes would be requisite to do it justice. Buildings of every description, from the humble cottage to the lofty temple, are objects of such constant recurrence in every habitable part of the globe, and are so strikingly indicative of the intelligence, character, and taste of the inhabitants, that they possess in themselves a great peculiar interest for the mind. — Andrew Jackson Downing

Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence - and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. — Paul Kalanithi

It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events. — Andre Maurois

Every thing was a friend, or bore her thoughts to a friend; and though there had been sometimes much of suffering to her- though her motives had been often misunderstood, her feelings disregarded, and her comprehension under-valued; though she had known the pains of tyranny, of ridicule, and neglect, yet almost every recurrence of either had led to something consolatory ... and the whole was now so blended together, so harmonised by distance, that every former affliction had its charm. — Jane Austen

Repeat reading for me shares a few things with hot-water bottles and thumbsucking: comfort, familiarity, the recurrence of the expected. — Margaret Atwood

Lovers' reading of each other's bodies (of that concentrate of mind and body which lovers use to go to bed together) differs from the reading of written pages in that it is not linear. It starts at any point, skips, repeat itself, goes backward, insists, ramifies in simultaneous and divergent messages, converges again, has moments of irritation, turns the page, finds its place, gets lost. A direction can be recognized in it, a route to an end, since it tends toward a climax, and with this end in view it arranges rhythmic phases, metrical scansions, recurrence of motives. But is the climax really the end? Or is the race toward that end opposed by another drive which works in the opposite direction, swimming against moments, recovering time? — Italo Calvino

In all well-attempered governments there is nothing which should be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small matters; for transgression creeps in unperceived and at last ruins the state, just as the constant recurrence of small expenses in time eats up a fortune. — Aristotle.

We must not imitate the externals of nature with so much fidelity that the picture fails to evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotion that marks the contemplation of a work of art. — John F. Carlson

The recurrence of fundamentals is essential to perpetuity. — Harold B. Lee

There are stages in the contemplation and endurance of great sorrow, which endow men with the same earnestness and clearness of thought that in some of old took the form of Prophecy. To those who have large capability of loving and suffering, united with great power of firm endurance, there comes a time in their woe, when they are lifted out of the contemplation of their individual case into a
searching inquiry into the nature of their calamity, and the remedy
(if remedy there be) which may prevent its recurrence to others as
well as to themselves.
Hence the beautiful, noble efforts which are from time to time
brought to light, as being continuously made by those who have once hung on the cross of agony, in order that others may not suffer as they have done; one of the grandest ends which sorrow can
accomplish; the sufferer wrestling with God's messenger until a
blessing is left behind, not for one alone but for generations. — Elizabeth Gaskell

As a twenty-one-year-old college student, Daisy Richmond's answer to the question "If you knew you were going to die in one month, what would you do?" was full of adventure and travel to exotic lands. As a twenty-seven-year-old woman who is faced with a recurrence of breast cancer, her answer is very different. Before I Go is the poignant story of Daisy's journey to navigate the unexpected twists and turns of life, and the painful process of letting go of everything but love. — Colleen Oakley

I am leaving because I have to fight simultaneously a potential recurrence of cancer the Democratic leadership, a health care bill that's going to destroy this country, my opposition to it and a belief that my party has become what it became - what it campaigned against. — Eric Massa

The recurrence of a phenomenon like [Thomas] Edison is not very likely. The profound change of conditions and the ever increasing necessity of theoretical training would seem to make it impossible. He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity. — Nikola Tesla

Transsexualism is far less common than homosexuality, and the research is in its infancy. Scattered studies have looked at brain activity, finger size, familial recurrence, and birth order. — Hanna Rosin

We all know how the thing we secretly fear is not a secret at all but the open and eternal thing that predicts its own recurrence. — Don DeLillo

I don't have any regrets," a famous movie actor said in an interview I recently witnessed. "I'd live everything over exactly the same way."
"That's really pathetic," the talk show host said. "Are you seeking help?"
"Yeah. My shrink says we're making progress. Before, I wouldn't even admit that I would live it all over," the actor said, starting to choke up. "I thought one life was satisfying enough."
"My God," the host said, cupping his hand to his mouth.
"The first breakthrough was when I said I would live it over, but only in my dreams. Nocturnal recurrence."
"You're like the character in that one movie of yours. What's it called? You know, the one where you eat yourself."
"The Silence of Sam."
"That's it. Can you do the scene?"
The actor lifts up his foot to stick it in his mouth. I reach over from my seat and help him to fit it into his bulging cheeks. The audience goes wild. — Benson Bruno

Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. — Patrick Henry

My father is sure that Israel keeps the Holocaust from happening again. I worry that it might hasten its recurrence. — Ayelet Waldman

Months after my wrists ripping, a talk therapist referred to the act as self-hatred. Until then nobody had said this to me. Did everyone presume that I already knew so? People say it all the time. It's safer to draw this conclusion. Throw in cowardice and you have an insulated public. I was not enraged at all. I was panic stricken. How could I hate myself for wanting to stop such physical sickness and terror? Mine was an act of caretaking, compassion, love. You cannot share this insight with therapists because they think such encourages recurrence. Have you ever stopped diarrhea with a prayer? If you have to go, you go. If you have to die, you die. — Brian Spellman

When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it. — Marcus Aurelius

This minimally invasive approach to hysteropexy involves laparoscopic plication of the round ligaments to the rectus sheath. A case series by O'Brien and Ibrahim (1994) of nine postmenopausal women with "moderate or marked" uterovaginal prolapse who underwent laparoscopic ventrosuspension provide discouraging results with 89% of women experiencing complete recurrence within 3 months, all of whom required additional surgery. Other authors have reported success with this procedure (Lin et al., 2005), although most literature focuses on uterosacral ligament plication and sacrohysteropexy, which are thought to provide more durable and anatomic repairs. — Mark D. Walters

The procedure of process is when we start to correlate with all the stages and provide cyclic recurrence, connect one thing with another and close a loop — Sunday Adelaja

He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted. — Samuel Johnson

Because the Egyptians had no feeling that events of the moment were transitory, they viewed the present as eternal. The world was static; what seemed like change was only recurrence of the eternal order. Thus, Egyptian literature does not contain careful records of the deeds, or distinctive characteristics of the pharaohs. Rather they are portrayed as the divine ideal, always just, wise, bold, strong, and victorious. — Norman F. Cantor

That no free government, nor the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles; and by the recognition by all citizens that they have duties as well as rights, and that such rights cannot be enjoyed save in a society where law is respected and due process is observed. — George Mason

When forced, as it seems, by your environment to be utterly disquieted, return with all speed into your self, staying in discord no longer than you must. By constant recurrence to the harmony, you will gain more command over it. — Marcus Aurelius

The standard formulation on remedy is that it ought to cure past violations and prevent their recurrence. That's what antitrust is all about. — Charles James

At the beginning of this year also, I called upon the North Korean side to open dialog between the responsible authorities of the South and the North at any place, at any time, and at any level, in order to prevent a recurrence of war and to cooperate to speed up the peaceful unification of our fatherland. However, no sincere response has yet been made by North Korea. — Jimmy Carter

Immortal is the moment when I engendered the recurrence. For the sake of this moment I bear the recurrence. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Creation is a miracle of daily recurrence. 'A miracle a minute' would not be a bad slogan for God. — George Bernard Shaw

It will be remembered, that a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is solemnly enjoined by most of the state constitutions, and particularly by our own, as a necessary safeguard against the danger of degeneracy, to which republics are liable, as well as other governments, though in a less degree than others. — James Madison

Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says 'All for me' is a horror to us. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Few things in life are certain, and one of them is that you can turn on the television at three in the morning and someone will be singing and dancing on the Indian channel. Proof of Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. — Jessica Zafra

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify? — Milan Kundera

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him. — Will Durant

Lack of outlets, excess capacity, complete deadlock, in the end regular recurrence of national bankruptcies and other disasters-perhaps world wars from sheer capitalist despair-may confidently be anticipated. History is as simple a that. — Joseph A. Schumpeter

It creates anew the universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hospital" turned out to represent a punctuated tedium, the recurrence of blood pressure and temperature checks, the placement and emptying of bedpans and painful switching of IV lines from the crook of one elbow to the other, and the switching of nurses as day and night were destroyed and replaced with tripartite shifts. — Jonathan Lethem

The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If — G.K. Chesterton

Just as today science recognizes the constant recurrence of simple, tiny atomic particles in all sort of organized matter, our ancestors had the intuition that there was a secret rhythm in Nature which was the same in every single natural manifestation. A crane dance must mirror star dances, and human dance is an alphabet to decipher the unknown. — Pippa Pralen

The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years. The latter are only helpful in the recurrence of opportunities; in the possibilities of repetition. — Bram Stoker

Surely one of the peculiar habits of circumstances is the way they follow, in their eternal recurrence, a single course. If an event happens once in a life, it may be depended upon to repeat later its general design. — Ellen Glasgow

Proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence. — Salman Rushdie

A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and for the simulated generation of differences. — Jean Baudrillard

War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. — Nikola Tesla

The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market. — Ludwig Von Mises

I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before his recurrence that I'd never grow old with Augustus Waters. But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up that you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again. — John Green

Credit expansion results in the recurrence of economic crisis and periods of depression. Inflation makes the prices of all commodities and services soar. The attempts to enforce wage rates higher than those the unhampered market would have determined produce mass unemployment prolonged year after year. Price ceilings result in a drop in the supply of commodities affected. The economists have proved these theorems in an irrefutable way. No — Ludwig Von Mises

When conducted with proper preparation, and in a focused and professional manner, oversight of executive branch actions can reveal serious shortcomings by government officials and help prevent recurrence; the 'Waco hearings,' conducted over a two-week period in 1995, stand as an example of such an undertaking. — Bob Barr

It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God has never got tired of making them ... The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. — G.K. Chesterton

What we usually find is that when people think they have a new idea or approach something for the first time, it is actually a recurrence of a line of thinking explored in the past. — Robert Hass

Eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever. — Irvin D. Yalom

It is a great priviledge to hear from the mouth of an initiate what struggles we are ensnared in and what the meaning is of the sacrifices we are required to make before veiled images. Even if we should hear something evil, it would still be a blessing to see our task as something beyond a senseless cycle of recurrence. — Ernst Junger

The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock. — Gordon Allport

Despite the recurrence of events in which the debris-basin system fails in its struggle to contain the falling mountains, people who live on the front line are for the most part calm and complacent. It appears that no amount of front-page or prime-time attention will ever prevent such people from masking out the problem. — John McPhee

We were thus led to organize ourselves, as men who had fought the war together, in order to support those statesmen who had truly understood the lessons of that World War, thus attempting to prevent its recurrence. — Rene Cassin

His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was such as, in Elinor's conjecture, must arise from something more than his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to others; and she soon discovered, in his melancholy eye and varying complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness; and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation. — Jane Austen

One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one of the most intoxicating features of poetry. It creates expectations, which can be fulfilled or frustrated. It can create a sense of boredom and complacency, but it can also incite enchantment and inspire bliss. — Edward Hirsch

Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow hoping for their recurrence. — Ned Rorem

The philosopher and historian George Santayana once remarked that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. A perusal of some of the essays will reveal that this is not always true. In some cases psychologists have known about mistakes of the past and sought to repeat them. But the recurrence can sometimes be fruitful: going round in circles can be a good thing, provided the circle is large that when one returns to the task one sees it in a new light and the error brings new insights. — Noel Sheehy