It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’
VIKTOR E. FRANKLThe attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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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.
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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.”
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A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.
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One should not search for an abstract meaning of life … Life can be made meaningful in a threefold way: first, through what we give to life … second, by what we take from the world … third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change.
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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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Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.
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There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
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When we are not any lengthier capable to alter a predicament, we’re challenged to alter ourselves
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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.
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No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
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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.
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Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
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Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
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One can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
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These 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.
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When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
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The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
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Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
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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.
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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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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