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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

Viktor E. Frankl

Sleep [is like] a dove which has landed near one’s hand and stays there as long as one does not pay any attention to it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Hands Long Sleep
It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Meaningful Spiritual Taken
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Change Happiness Life
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
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
Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Existential Humanity Psychotherapy
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Expression Motivational
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 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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Above Altering Known Life Rise Well
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
It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Condition Meaning Men Search
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’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Chiefs Men Motivation
Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Country Fate Inspirational People Victim
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Chaos Mans Meaning Response Search Stimulus
No one can take from us the ability to choose our attitudes toward the circumstances in which we find ourselves. This is the last of human freedoms.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Attitude Circumstances Lasts

The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

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