"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after
you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it
and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more;
and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every
thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will
have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this
spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I
myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and
again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon
who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to
yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal
confirmation and seal?"
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche