Repeat Quotes & Sayings

But I'd be lying if I didn't say that every time you go to make a film, you're desperate to either do it better than you did it last time or to not repeat yourself. — Paul Thomas Anderson

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, " Memento Mori": Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero keep things in perspective, instill some humility. Job's memento mori had been delivered by his doctors, but it did not instill humility. Instead he roared back after his recovery with even more passion. The illness reminded him that he had nothing to lose, so he should forge ahead full speed. " He came back on a mission," said Cook. " Even though he was now running a large company, he kept making bold moves that I don't think anybody else would have done. — Walter Isaacson

Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another s soul. — James Joyce

I've been a straight man for so many years that from force of habit I repeat everything. I went out fishing with a fellow the other day and he fell overboard. He yelled, Help! Help! Help! so I said, Help? Help? Help? And while I was waiting for him to get his laugh, he drowned. — George Burns

Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat till the page is full, printer. — Vladimir Nabokov

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.
Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I enjoy staying home with friends more than going out. The other night, for example, my girlfriends and I stayed in listening to some '90s rap - my favorite kind. We were in the Hamptons and made it an all-Biggie weekend, all of his albums on repeat. I loved it. — Phoebe Tonkin

if Substance is Life, is the Subject not Death? Insofar as, for Hegel, the basic feature of pre-subjective Life is the "spurious infinity" of the eternal reproduction of the life substance through the incessant movement of the generation and corruption of its elements - that is, the "spurious infinity" of a repetition without progress - the ultimate irony we encounter here is that Freud, who called this excess of death over life the "death drive," conceived it precisely as repetition, as a compulsion to repeat. — Slavoj Zizek

I know in fashion what's new is old and trends repeat but the 90's trends ala 90210 aren't exactly styles I'd want to wear today. — Tori Spelling

The Birmingham campaign was a repeat of SCLC's 1961 campaign in Albany, Georgia, which turned out a complete failure. King was banking on being able to fill up the jails and still have recruits willing to engage in civil disobedience, shutting the system down, but the authorities simply made their jails "bottomless" by shipping detainees elsewhere. A couple years later, black residents of Albany rioted, suggesting what they thought about their experience with nonviolence (these riots are not mentioned in most chronologies of the movement). — Anonymous

Why resurrect it all now. From the Past. History, the old wound. The past emotions all over again. To confess to relive the same folly. To name it now so as not to repeat history in oblivion. To extract each fragment by each fragment from the word from the image another word another image the reply that will not repeat history in oblivion. — Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

I repeat his words in my head. What's going on? What's going on? Oh, well, since you asked, I got a bunch of tapes in the mail today from a girl who killed herself. Apparently, I had something to do with it. I'm not sure what that is, so I was wondering if I could borrow your Walkman to find out. 'Not much,' I say. — Jay Asher

Their eyes met at the same instant moment, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist, her eyes were grey, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and, caught by them, Therese could not look away. She heard the customer in front of her repeat a question, and Therese stood there, mute. The woman was looking at Therese, too, with a preoccupied expression, as if half her mind were on whatever is was she meant to buy here, and though there were a number of salesgirls between them, There felt sure the woman would come to her, Then, Then Therese saw her walk slowly towards the counter, heard her heart stumble to catch up with the moment it had let pass, and felt her face grow hot as the woman came nearer and nearer. — Patricia Highsmith

History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music. — Stephen King

Repeats are the worst, and 'Peanuts' was the one that started that. They don't rerun the news, do they? They don't repeat any other part of the paper. Why do they do it in the comics? — Stephan Pastis

What a queer planet!" he thought. "It is altogether dry, and altogether pointed, and altogether harsh and forbidding. And the people have no imagination. They repeat whatever one says to them ... On my planet I had a flower; she always was the first to speak ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other time within which it can repeat itself. For time is but an abstraction from the successive-ness of events that pass; and since all events whatsoever form together a cycle of successive-ness, there is nothing constant in relation to which there can be repetition. And so the succession of events is cyclic, yet not repetitive. The birth of the all-pervading gas in the so-called Beginning is not merely similar to another such birth to occur long after us and long after the cosmic End, so-called; the past Beginning is the future Beginning.

When we are in full possession of our faculties, we are not distressed by this fate. For we know that though our fair community must cease, it has also indestructible being. We have at least carved into one region of the eternal real a form which has beauty of no mean order. — Olaf Stapledon

There are three words I like to repeat to myself: glass half full. Just to remind myself to be grateful for everything I have. — Goldie Hawn

But I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid - simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But I am just a woman who thinks her duty is not to forget. And this duty, which I believe I must fulfill, is: "as a woman" living now I must repeat again and again "I am a woman," because we exist in an epoch still so ancient and ignorant and slow that there is still always the danger of gynocide. — Helene Cixous

You know that thing where you repeat a word over and over until it just sounds like utter gibberish? That's what doing a day of press on a film is like. Ten interviews in a row, all asking pretty much the same questions until you find yourself giving pretty much the same answers. — John Niven

When blame inevitably arises, the most senior people in the room should repeat this mantra: if a mistake happens, shame on us for making it so easy to make that mistake. — Eric Ries

For a man who was to exhibit such acute political sharpness later in his career, Napoleon completely misread the revolution's opening stages. 'I repeat what I have said to you,' he wrote to Joseph on July 22, a week after the fall of the Bastille, 'calm will return. In a month, there will no longer be a question of anything. So, if you send me 300 livres [7,500 francs] I will go to Paris to terminate our business. — Andrew Roberts

I'd like to do a lot of different stuff. I think it's important as a creative person to keep challenging yourself and keep doing new stuff. If you end up trying to repeat yourself it's death. It just becomes boring and takes the passion out of it. You gotta find stories and characters that you really want to hang out with. — Darren Aronofsky

Wesay nothing. We know the slight was not deliberate. We live in tight quarters, traveling together. There's no time to constantly be apologizing for existing. But when someone does wrong, when we make mistakes, we don't say sorry. We promise to make amends."
"I will."
"Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo. It means we won't repeat the same mistakes, that we won't continue to do harm."
Inej and Jesper (p338) — Leigh Bardugo

The artist himself is often surprised at the finished work of art. He cannot tell 'how it happened', nor could he repeat the feat at someone's bidding. — John F. Carlson

Kaidan had been captivated by the store owner's deep Texan accent. He asked a ridiculous number of questions just to keep the man talking. He then tried to repeat the man's accent when we got in the car. "Where are y'all young'uns headed? We got us some maps over yonder by them there h-apples."
I laughed out loud as he butchered the man's beautiful drawl.
"He did not say 'over yonder'!"
"I've always wanted to say that. I love Americans. You've got a nice little accent, though not nearly as wicked as his."
"I do?"
He nodded.
Aside from the occasional y'all, I didn't think I sounded Southern, but I guess it's hard to say about your own self. — Wendy Higgins

What kind of understanding?" he murmured almost absently, his mind clearly on other, more provocative things.
The trace of amusement in his voice irritated her, as if he were merely humoring her. Savannah pushed at the solid wall of his chest to put a few inches between them. His large frame didn't budge, and she was locked in by his arm. She pushed at him again. "Forget it."
He bent his head to taste the vulnerable line of her neck, to feel her pulse in the warm, moist cavern of his mouth. His blood surged and pounded. Little jackhammers began to beat at his skull. "I am listening to every word you say, ma petite," he murmured, lost in her softness, in the scent of her. He wanted her with every fiber of his being, every cell in his body. "I could repeat each word verbatim, if you desire. — Christine Feehan

While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune on the flute. "What will be the use of that?" he was asked. "To know this tune before dying." If I dare repeat this reply long since trivialized by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence. — Emil Cioran

If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure. — Seth Godin

There's one advantage in having been around as long as I have. Everybody in the Senate knows me, and - I'm going to say something presumptuous, to repeat myself - I think most respect me. — Joe Biden

The feel of her body against his was exhilarating, driving all rational thought from his head. "All right, prepare
yourself, Claire Brennan."
She looked up at him curiously. "Prepare myself for
what?"
He gazed at her affectionately. "Repeat your mantra, or
whatever it is you do. Because I'm about to kiss you. — Syrie James

Again begins the ridiculous, terrible waiting, in which we do not know which object to move, which gesture to repeat - what to do in order to make what we are waiting for happen. — Andre Breton

This was a pattern America would repeat throughout Latin America where any government, no matter how corrupt, brutal or oppressive, was supported in preference to popular socialism. — Jimmy Thomson

But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously ... — Julio Cortazar

Isaiah Berlin once said that there are two kinds of writers, hedgehogs and foxes. He said the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one thing. So Shakespeare is a typical fox; Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are typical hedgehogs. Now, I'm a typical hedgehog. I know just one thing, and I repeat it over and over again. I try to approach it from different angles to make it look different, but it's the same thing. — Colin Wilson

Try. Make mistake. Fail. Learn. Try better. Make mistake. Fail. Learn. Try better still. Make mistake. Fail. Learn. Repeat until ... Try. Succeed. — Ken Evoy

Genuine surprise is a great help when faced with an unwelcome duty. Of course, when it's the paying of debts you're forgetting, that can lead to broken fingers. And worse. I guess it's a form of lying - lying to oneself. And I'm very good at falsehoods. They often say the best liars half-believe their lies - which makes me the very best because if I repeat a lie often enough I can end up believing it entirely, no half measures involved! — Mark Lawrence

Seeing a cat loving her kittens stand and pray. God has become manifest there; literally believe this. Repeat "I am Thine, I am Thine", for we can see God everywhere. Do not seek for Him, just see Him. — Swami Vivekananda

If you don't have a vision for the future, then your future is threatened to be a repeat of the past. — A.R. Bernard

I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy. — Nawal El Saadawi

My very first products were hand-made, one-of-a-kind pins. When I finally realized I could repeat a phrase to make multiples, 'intellectuals gone bad,' a fairly succinct description of my own life, seemed appropriate. — Anne Taintor

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility. — Errol Morris

On the TV he found cartoons and movies, music videos and game shows, repeat broadcasts and reruns, but there was nothing current, and no news. Many channels were just blank, or displayed brightly coloured test cards. — A. Ashley Straker

Why cover the same ground again? ... It goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly. — Homer

James fought the temptation to repeat "traditional chromosomal energy signature," just because it was such an awesome example of erudition gone weird, and thought hard to answer her question. — Amy Lane

Science cannot tell you whether abortion is wrong, but it can point out that the (embryological) continuum that seamlessly joins a non-sentient foetus to a sentient adult is analogous to the (evolutionary) continuum that joins humans to other species. If the embryological continuum appears to be more seamless, this is only because the evolutionary continuum is divided by the accident of extinction. Fundamental principles of ethics should not depend on the accidental contingencies of extinction.* To repeat, science cannot tell you whether abortion is murder, but it can warn you that you may be being inconsistent if you think abortion is murder but killing chimpanzees is not. You cannot have it both ways. — Richard Dawkins

Identify your personal limits and then push past them. Then set new barriers, and repeat the process, again and again and again. — Nicole Haislett

We read history in order not to have to repeat it. — Inge Scholl

Let me repeat what history teaches. History teaches. — Gertrude Stein

S Club 7, in some ways, was a continuation of some of the things I'd have liked to have done with the Spice Girls. It was also a shift in tone. S Club was this equality of boys and girls, very positive, very uplifting, didn't have the edge of the Spice Girls. I didn't want to repeat it. — Simon Fuller

The emphasis on technology over an understanding of the realities of war and conflict reflect[s] the ahistoricism not only of too much of the U.S. military officer corps, but of the American educational system as well. Our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan were the result of a pervasive failure to understand the historical framework within which insurgencies take place, to appreciate the cultural and political factors of other nations and people, and to encourage the learning of foreign languages. In other words, in Afghanistan and Iraq we managed to repeat many of the mistakes we made in Vietnam, because America's political and military leaders managed to forget nearly every lesson of that conflict. — Peter R. Mansoor

All that falls is not bad. — Vikrmn

There are words to describe her, my dear, but one does not repeat them in polite company. — Gail Carriger

I am not interested in the ephemeral - such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions. — Thornton Wilder

It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that
great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie. — Vladimir Lenin

One sign of an excellent speech? 'Can people repeat something they heard, word for word?' — Sam Horn

People like him think you can apologize things away, that you can confess over and over until you are free to repeat your crime. — Philipp Meyer

Not even a repeat of Dawson's Creek makes me feel better. — Susane Colasanti

If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new centre. Now the person will feel keenl — Abraham Maslow

Have you ever experienced human love?"

"Yes. Once."

Regret shadowed his face. "Then why would you be willing to repeat it?"

"What we learn is worth more than what we lose. — Elizabeth Langston

Whatever her tone with me happened to be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it always was. — Charles Dickens

Pretty hard to see when you refuse to look. Pretty hard to hear when you refuse to listen. — Jeff Bell

When in prayer, there is no need to implore, beg or repeat. You have been heard, and your wishes will be granted perfectly at the right time. Relax, be patient and do not fret. — Pooja Ruprell

We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.
I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89 — Terry Brooks

History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it. — John Buchan

Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves. — Alain De Botton

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

Writers tend to hate recurring characters; there's this writer snob thing about it. But I don't have that. I feel like the challenge is always to find a cool and innovative way to do it and, obviously, to not repeat your jokes. — Ana Gasteyer

If you repeat it, it's true. If you repeat it, it's true. And through repetition, something becomes true. If you repeat it enough. Until it becomes true. Or do I need to repeat that for you? — Stephen Colbert

They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere. — Muriel Barbery

He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn't care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that's all Louis was, slipping back into the life. — Elmore Leonard

I think it's too easy often to find a villain out of the headlines and to then repeat that villainy again and again and again. You know, traditionally, America has always looked to scapegoat someone as the boogie man. — Edward Zwick

I will repeat again that females are the symbols of nonviolence. Another thing I would say is that a female is more compromising. A female can talk with anyone easily. — Yingluck Shinawatra

Check what you did right and don't get lost in basking on your glory. It will make it easier to repeat whatever you did that created the success. — Norman Vincent Peale

I would rather play with forked lightning, or take in my hand living wires with their fiery current, than to speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their own souls and bodies. — A.B. Simpson

A typical weeknight when he was home like this:
1. Sit down and try to do homework.
2. Get interrupted by Jeffrey: "Please play with me!"
3. Ignore brother, try to do homework.
4. Get interrupted by Jeffrey: "Come ON, Steven! I'm BORED!"
5. Beg Jeffrey for five minutes of peace.
6. Get begged for five minutes of play: "Steven, you never, ever play with me - ever!"
7. Move entire homework operations center to different room.
8. Repeat steps #1-7 as directed by small drugged maniac. — Jordan Sonnenblick

As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested ... in unskilled labor ... The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on. — Minnie Maddern Fiske

I'm a very, very unreckless person. I mean, I look left, I look right, I look left, I look right, then I repeat the process and then I decide not to cross the road at the last minute. — Jonathan Meades

Work to live up to your dreams and fantasies; to hell with them who ask you to come back to reality. — Vikrmn

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination. — W. Somerset Maugham

Life has been bestowed upon us freely. NEVER! and I repeat NEVER ... at any one time allow anyone to make you plead for it!! Never plead for a life that you have been given this freely!!! You got to fight for it and protect and defend it! Protecting this life is the only reason why we ever need to fight anyone or anything! — Akuku Mach Pep

Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter
discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer
comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature. — Gary Chapman

- How dare you, I repeat, In disregard of all decency, call me a goose?
- I spit on your head, Ivan Ivanovich! What are you screaming so for? — Nikolai Gogol

We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery. — Todd Gitlin

And I will repeat today what I have said throughout this campaign. I will not raise taxes on the middle class. I will give you tax relief to help ease these burdens. — Hillary Clinton

I'm dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched: a man with a cane was crossing the street, a dull groan suddenly surged through the asphalt, the man stood still as if waiting for someone to repeat the question and then the earth opened up beneath his feet: it swallowed the man, and with him a car and a dog, all the oxygen around and even the screams of passers-by. I'm dead, Makina said to herself, and hardly had she said it than her whole body began to contest that verdict and she flailed her feet frantically backward, each step mere inches from the sinkhole, until the precipice settled into a perfect circle and Makina was saved. Slippery bitch of a city, she said to herself. Always about to sink back into the the cellar. — Yuri Herrera

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

emptying out of my mother's belly
was my first act of disappearance
learning to shrink for a family
who likes their daughters invisible
was the second
the art of being empty
is simple
believe them when they say
you are nothing
repeat it to yourself
like a wish
i am nothing
i am nothing
i am nothing
so often
the only reason you know
you're still alive is from the
heaving of your chest — Rupi Kaur

Man is doomed to repeat his mistakes time and again because he learns only from experience. — Mark Lawrence

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans
anything except reason. — Thomas Sowell

Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself. — Mark Twain

Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally. — Isabel Allende

Priests, kings, statesmen, soldiers, bankers and public functionaries of all sorts; policemen, jailers and hangmen; capitalists, usurers, businessmen and property-owners; lawyers, economists and politicians - all of them, down to the meanest grocer, repeat in chorus the words of Voltaire, that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him. — Mikhail Bakunin

In addition to being extremely expensive, and we have to put up with the stupidities that the candidates repeat, it's really being decided elsewhere who will sit in the presidential seat. — Subcomandante Marcos

Just look carefully, I only want you to look carefully. Do not repeat the lies of liars. Do not become like them. Once again, I blame al-Jazeera before it ascertains what takes place. Please, make sure of what you say and do not play such a role. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

As far as I'm concerned it's the other way round. We repeat what we remember. Only forgetfulness sets us free. — Margot Livesey

My Dream Date.
Putting Pink Floyd on loop in at least a 5-CD rotation or on spotify or something, getting real high on hash while naked, making love on and off for hours, lying on the bed eating cheesy crackers and sipping a quality beer like Tetley's, Guinness or Pilsner Urquell.
Repeat as needed. — Sienna McQuillen

The days with the baby felt long but there was nothing expansive about them. Caring for her required me to repeat a series of tasks that had the peculiar quality of seeming both urgent and tedious. They cut the day up into little scraps. — Jenny Offill

To me, the big thing in being a successful team is repetition of what you're doing, either by word of mouth, blackboard, or specifically by work on the field. You repeat, repeat, repeat as a unit. — Vince Lombardi