Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure

And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

"On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...

If you re-read your work you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

In a repressive society a writer can be deeply influential but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

Constant repetition of tongue-twisters was like lifting weights for me but patience and persistence have paid off.

The relation of repetitions for learning and for repeating English stanzas needs no amplification. These were learned by heart on the first day with less than half of the repetitions necessary for the shortest of the syllable series.

History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living.

The history of man is the history of crimes and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build we must build a defence against repetition.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

Happiness is the longing for repetition.

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment but of boredom.

My greatest fear: repetition.

My film directorial career has been nothing but repetition of one failure after another!