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
VIKTOR E. FRANKLThus, human existence-at least as long as it has not been neurotically distorted-is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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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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There are two races of men in this world but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.
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The salvation of man is through love and in love.
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It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
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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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Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
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Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
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No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
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It is always important to have something yet to do in life.
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It 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.
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
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We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life.
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Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
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Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
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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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Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
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Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
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You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
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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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Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
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At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
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Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
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A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
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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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Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.
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Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL