The Minutes

“Repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forward.  Repetition, therefore, if it is possible, makes a person happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy–assuming, of course, that he gives himself time to live and does not promptly at birth find an excuse to sneak out of life again, for example, that he has forgotten something…

…The dialectic of repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been–otherwise it could not be repeated–but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new.  When the Greeks said that all knowing is recollecting, they said that all existence, which is, has been; now comes into existence.  If one does not have the category of recollection or of repetition, all life dissolves into an empty, meaningless noise.”  

Constantin Constantius (Soren Kiekegaard), Repetition