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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLBut 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.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.
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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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Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy – it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
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View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn’t? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn’t
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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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Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
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Man’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.
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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.
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The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
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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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What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.
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Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
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Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
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A human being is a deciding being.
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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