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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.

Viktor E. Frankl

But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Courage Grief Men
As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Mean People Struggle
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Opportunity Suffering Unhappy
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Causes Dedication Happiness
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
You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Journey Life Missions
The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Keys Mental Health Quests
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. FRANKL

Giving Successful Suffering
Thus, 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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Encounters Existential Human Long
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Become Existence Men Token
No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Away Choose Freedom Take
Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Detect Gains Men Pain
We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Asking Life Man Meaning Search
I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Country Lectures Ministry Ultimately
Despair is suffering without meaning.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Despair Existential Suffering
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Death Fate Life Meaning Suffering
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
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Love Men Secret
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Attitude Learning Life
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Expression Motivational
Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Humans Instant Meaning Search
At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Existence Men Moments
When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Change Inspirational Positive
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
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.”
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Life Men Responsibility
No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Honesty Humility Men
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Boredom Existential Vacuum

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.

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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.

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