It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLIt is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
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But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
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You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
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For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
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The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.
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The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
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When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
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If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.
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A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”
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View life as a series of movie frames, the ending and meaning may not be apparent until the very end of the movie, and yet, each of the hundreds of individual frames has meaning within the context of the whole movie.
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Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
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The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
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Man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.
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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
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God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies
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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
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I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.
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View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn’t? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn’t
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Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.
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It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
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The more one forgives himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
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We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed; 2. by experiencing a value; and 3. by suffering.
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We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents…Sometimes the ‘unfinisheds’ are among the most beautiful symphonies.
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…to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.
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You can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me – and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!
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I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL