108 Repetition Quotes

Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquacity and verbosity the curious paradox of the minimalist form. This art of the nuance in repetition and placement she shares with the orchestral compositions of Philip Glass.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

There's no harm in talking to yourself, but try to avoid telling yourself jokes you've heard before.

For the first lesson, I want you to play over every column of Modern Chess Openings, including the footnotes. And for the next lesson, I want you to do it again.

When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.

All my life's a circle; But I can't tell you why; Season's spinning round again; The years keep rollin' by.

And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvring itself with pole akimbo round the tight corner where Bourke Street enters Spring.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he's a hack.

I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.

And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept.

'You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.'

When I said. 'A rose is a rose is a rose.' And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do? I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.

I made the mistake of watching 'A.I.' on cable the week they showed it about 792 times, and I ended up watching it every time it was on.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

I wish I had an answer to that, because I'm tired of answering that question.

The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. Especially if it is repeated again and again.

Isn't life just a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.

They were regular in being gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, they learned many little things that are things in being gay, they were gay every day, they were regular, they were gay, they were gay the same length of time every day, they were gay, they were quite regularly gay.

There are many that I know and I know it. They are many that I know and they know it. They are all of them themselves and they repeat it and I hear it. Always I listen to it. Slowly I come to understand it. Many years I listened and did not know it. I heard it, I understood it some, I did not know I heard it. They repeat themselves now and I listen to it. Every way that they do it now I hear it. Now each time very slowly I come to understand it. Always it comes very slowly the completed understanding of it, the repeating each one does to tell it the whole history of the being in each one, always now I hear it. Always now slowly I understand it.

Repeating then is in every one, in every one their being and their feeling and their way of realizing everything and every one comes out of them in repeating. More and more then every one comes to be clear to some one.

The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated. When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.

Hamm: Ah, the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!

Nell: Nothing is funnier than unhappiness. Nagg: Oh? Nell: Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

To go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I'll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time.

A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. [citation needed]

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.

As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11 [...] it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again.

It's like deja vu all over again.

You must do over the same subject ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must appear accidental, even a movement.

'It didn't work, so let's do it some more'? In my line of work, they call that military stupidity. I don't know what they call it in civilian life.

The screen went blank, and words appeared. Play again?

I still don't look at movies twice. It's funny, I just feel I got it the first time. With music it's different. People respond so differently to the whole issue of seeing a movie many times. I'm astonished when I talk to really good critics, who know their stuff and will see a film eight or ten or twelve times. I don't see how they can do it without hating the movie. I would.

And it's the same sad song coming back again. The same old song, flows back again. ~ 'So Much Work'

Oh Billie I want you so, I'm trying to meet you. Too many things they don't know, too many repeatings, of beatings. ~ 'Closet'

This old familiar craving I've been here before, this way of behaving Don't know who the hell I'm saving anymore Let it pass let it go let it leave From the deepest place I grieve This time I believe And I let go ...

And you realize you're an alcoholic when you repeat yourself. You realize you're an alcoholic when you repeat yourself. You realize you're an alcoholic...oh, dammit, dammit, God DAMMIT.

Khan is played as a cauldron of resentment by Ricardo Montalban, and his performance is so strong that he helps illustrate a general principle involving not only Star Trek but Star Wars and all the epic serials, especially the James Bond movies: Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph.

Red-in-red repetitions never going Away,a little rusty, a little rouged, A little roughened and ruder, a crown The eye could not escape, a red renown Blowing itself upon the tedious ear.

A thing final in itself and, therefore, good: One of the vast repetitions final in Themselves and, therefore, good, the going round And round and round, the merely going round, Until merely going round is a final good, The way wine comes at a table in a wood.

Perhaps, The man-hero is not the exceptional monster, But he that of repetition is most master.

'She bangs, she bangs...' (Singing Ricky Martin's, She Bangs)

'No escape from the mass mind rape. Play it again jack and then rewind the tape'

breakfast breakfast i am full of breakfast and they are at breakfast in heaven they breakfast in heaven all s well with the world

'Mock......ing.....bird.....yeah.' (Dumb and Dumber)

A guy told me he liked cherries...but... I waited to see if he was gonna say tomato...before i realized he likes cherries just...alright, that joke is ridiculous. That's like a carbon copy of the previous joke but with different ingredients. I don't know what i was trying to pull off there.

What bothered him was that he didn't exactly care. He didn't not care either. He was just going through the motions as he had a thousand times before, and this time, suddenly, it all seemed so silly

(said repeatedly) I'm Ted Bell.

Hoes, Dave, Dave, hoes.

4: We must repeat!

Cut and come again.

'Is this Groundhog Day?'

Nothing happens, twice.

But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

'Head Head Head Head Head!!'

Twice, adv. Once too often.

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.

If it all just happens like this for the rest of my life, it's going to be one endless Groundhog Day. I determined that I was not prepared to submit to this regime, so I thought I had to do something about it.

The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. Most Russian music, indeed, consists in ringing changes on this device, skilfully disguised though the fact may be.

Oh! We already, we done already done it, done it, dammit! I could you know, like, sing a thing, and then not sing it for a little while, and then sing it again... and people would be like, 'Why'd he sing that again?'

There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch.

In the course of an average lifetime anyone growing up in a house with such a clock will hear the tune over a million times.

Hundred years ago Napolean goes steaming into Russia going 'I'm going to kill them all! I'm going to kill th-...oooo its a bit cold it's a bit cold!' Then Hitler tries and goes 'I've a got a better idea, i've got a better ide-...noooo it's the same idea, it's the same idea!'

'What? : The Carthaginians are attacking? God, I knew they'd do that. What? : They are attacking over the Alps? Damn, I knew they'd do that. What? : They're coming on Elephants? : Where'd they get the Elephants? There aren't any Elephants in Europe. This I got to see : are you sure? : It's not just a typo mistake? Perhaps the Carthaginians are attacking over the alps and they are in their element? Kind of upbeat, you know. They're coming on fucking elephants, huh.'

We throw sticks at dogs, that's the level we have dogs at. You'd never dream of throwing one for a cat. We throw sticks for dogs, and dogs go, 'Oh, he's dropped his stick! I better go and get that: (mimes chasing after the stick) Saw you dropped your stick there. Thought I'd bring it back: And you hang on: (mimes giving the stick back and follows it with eyes as it's thrown again) Did you see me just bring that back? And then you...you dropped it again? This is very weird I don't know what's going on here (mimes bringing the stick back again) Now hang on to it this time, I don't want to piss about all the time. You think I enjoy this? There you: Don't fucking throw it!!' That's why the third time, when they come back, they won't give it to you, they go, (through clenched teeth) 'No: I won't let you take it!'

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

Things are more like today than they have ever been before.

If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

'Mountains, Bruce, mountains,' the manager said. 'Mountains, Bruce, mountains,' Bruce said and gazed. 'Echolalia, Bruce, echolalia,' the manager said. 'Echolalia, Bruce-' 'Okay, Bruce,' the manager said, and shut the cabin door behind him, thinking, I believe I'll put him among the carrots. Or beets. Something simple. Something that won't puzzle him.

The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting...Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness.

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it

Does it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them? ~ Robert Schumann