Chronologically arranged statements and passages from Nietzsche on Eternal Recurrence

This selection is ongoing and will be expanded over time.

1881

“Now, my dear and good friend! The August sun shines over our heads, the year is fugitive, it grows quieter and more peaceful on the mountains and in the woods. Thoughts have been looming on my horizon the like of which I have never seen — I don’t want to say a word about them, I want to preserve an unruffled calm in myself.
It seems I shall have to live several years longer. Oh, my friend sometimes the realization runs through my head that I am actually living a supremely dangerous life: for I belong among those machines that can explode! The intensities of my feeling make me shudder and laugh aloud — already on several occasions I was unable to leave my room for the ridiculous reason that my eyes were inflamed — from what? On each occasion I had been weeping excessively during my hikes the day before; no, not sentimental tears, but tears of exultation; during which I sang and muttered nonsense, filled to the brim with my new vision, which I am the first of all human beings to have.” (From Nietzsche’s letter to Heinrich Köselitz [Peter Gast], August 14, 1881, Sils-Maria)

⁂

“The world of forces does not suffer any diminution: otherwise, in infinite time it would have become weak and perished. The world of forces does not suffer any standstill: otherwise it would have been reached and the clock of existence would stand still. The world of forces never comes to equilibrium; it has never had a moment of rest; its force and its motion are equally great for every time.

The state which this world can reach must have been reached; if it can be reached, it must be reached. And if it has not been reached, then it is not reachable. And if it is reachable, then it must already have been reached — and indeed infinitely often. Since the present moment is one that has already been infinitely often and recurs in the same way, so too the moment between every becoming and passing away has been infinitely often — and thus all becoming and passing away.

Fourth Book: dithyrambic, all-embracing: “Annulus aeternitatis.” The longing to experience all this once more and once more, for all eternity.

It is the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. We deny final purposes: if existence had one, it would have been reached already. One then understands that the circle of recurrence has no “goal,” nor anything resembling one; rather, conceived in its totality, it is the highest state one can imagine.” (Nachlass, Summer 1881, KSA 9, 11[141]).

1884

“Immortal is the moment in which I begot the return. For the sake of that moment I endure the return.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part III, “The Convalescent”.)

1888

“The fundamental idea of the work — the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula of affirmation that can ever be attained — belongs to August of the year 1881. I made a note of the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: ‘Six thousand feet beyond man and time.’ That day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside the Lake of Silvaplana, and I halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that the thought struck me.” (Ecce Homo, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” 1888).