Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

There is nothing new under the sun.

The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself.

You know, if you hang around this earth long enough you really see how things come full circle.

History is about loops and continuums.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate.

They say that children become men, and men become children. Many generations have grown up, become men, and gone hence.

That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.

The more things change, the more they are the same.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

I'm a storyteller; that is what I do. And I'm particularly interested in history; and in history of a certain era. But what is interesting for me is how many, how many things you see repeated.

The more change, the more it's the same thing.

What always was must always be.

For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.

All new news is old news happening to new people

Who so desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again: Redit orbis in orbem.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun

History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.

Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea.

History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.

History repeats itself and that's just how it goes.

Twenty years after we had left so fierce and proud, we were all right back where we had started, yoked to each other and the same old drama.