Q0074

Friedrich Nietzsche

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more…
Thinker Friedrich Nietzsche
School Philosophy of Life
Source The Gay Science §341
Theme Eternity
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The Gay Science §341, within the tradition of Philosophy of Life. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of eternity, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Friedrich Nietzsche's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Friedrich Nietzsche. (n.d.). This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more… In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0074

MLA: Friedrich Nietzsche. “This life as you now live it and….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0074.

Chicago: Friedrich Nietzsche. “This life as you now live it and….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0074.

Same thinker

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

  1. From the military school of life. — What does not kill me makes me stronger.
  2. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!
  3. How one becomes what one is.
  4. Man is something that shall be overcome.
  5. One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

All quotations by Friedrich Nietzsche

Same theme

More on eternity

  1. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  2. To abandon the struggle for private happiness…to burn with passion for eternal things — this is emancipation.
  3. First, it always is, and neither comes to be nor perishes.
  4. It is of the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity.
  5. We feel and know by experience that we are eternal.

Browse the eternity theme