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. FRANKLThese tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
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No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.
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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.
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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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At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
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God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies
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The struggle for existence is a struggle ‘for’ something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.
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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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The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude especially an attitude of gratitude in a given set of circumstances especially in difficult circumstances.
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If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.
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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.
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Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.
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When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
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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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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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL