The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
VIKTOR E. FRANKLWe can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed; 2. by experiencing a value; and 3. by suffering.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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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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The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.
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Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
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Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
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In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.
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You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
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Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
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Once an individual’s search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering
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Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!
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Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
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Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.
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What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
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When we are not any lengthier capable to alter a predicament, we’re challenged to alter ourselves
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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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This is the core of the human spirit … If we can find something to live for – if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives – even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL