black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

It isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.

Viktor E. Frankl

Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Effort Men Spiritual
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Frame May Spiritual Views
Man ultimately decides for himself! And in the end, education must be education towards the ability to decide
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Learning Men Teaching
Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Determined Giving Men
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

Kind Spirit Suffering
A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Despair Disease Mean Men
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Beautiful Death Symphony
The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Away Choose One Thing Way
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Frank Image Mind Real Wife
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Encounters Existentialism Suffering
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!
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Children Clothes Wife
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Future Looking Meaning Men Search
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Fear Sacrifice Suffering
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Different Life Suffering
It is always important to have something yet to do in life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Important Life Something
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Life Meaning Men

It isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

It isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes