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Full Idea
Suppose a demon were to say to you, "This life as you have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more". …Then the question in each thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie across your actions.
Gist of Idea
Imagine if before each of your actions you had to accept repeating the action over and over again
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §341)
Book Ref
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'The Gay Science', ed/tr. Kaufmann,Walter [Vintage 1974], p.273
A Reaction
If you were stuck in nihilistic indifference, this thought might not be enough to rouse you from your torpor. If all possibilities in life are boring, repetition cannot pep it up, or make it any worse. But I still love this idea!
| 22093 | Life is a repetition when what has been now becomes [Kierkegaard] |
| 20137 | The great person engages wholly with life, and is happy to endlessly relive the life they created [Nietzsche] |
| 20144 | Eternal recurrence is the highest attainable affirmation [Nietzsche] |
| 24088 | See our present lives as eternal! Religions see it as fleeting, and aim at some different life [Nietzsche] |
| 24119 | The eternal return of wastefulness is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| 24136 | Who can endure the thought of eternal recurrence? [Nietzsche] |
| 24154 | If you want one experience repeated, you must want all of them [Nietzsche] |
| 2936 | Imagine if before each of your actions you had to accept repeating the action over and over again [Nietzsche] |
| 6842 | Nietzsche says facing up to the eternal return of meaninglessness is the response to nihilism [Nietzsche, by Critchley] |
| 7172 | Existence without meaning or goal or end, eternally recurring, is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| 20124 | Reliving life countless times - this gives the value back to life which religion took away [Nietzsche] |