“All conscious nature has experiences of pleasure and pain. Man alone can deliberately will the repetition of an experience. And repetition, experienced as such, is at the heart, for good and evil, of his faculty of reasoning, and thus makes possible his language, his art, his morality, and indeed his humanity. Yet it is the enemy of life, for repetition is itself the principle, not of life but of mechanism.”

“Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible”

“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”

“Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.”

“Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.”

“There is a value in repetition. When we repeat certain phrases and even actions, like fingering prayer beads, we create a quiet rhythm within our spirits. The beating of our heart is a repetition as is the rhythm of our breathing. All of life has its rhythms, and the repetition of familiar prayers can bring our interior spirits into harmony with the Divine Heartbeat and the breathing of the Divine Christ.”