It isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLView 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.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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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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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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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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It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
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No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.
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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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Man’s last freedom is his freedom to choose how he will react in any given situation
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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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God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies
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Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.
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In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.
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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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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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Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
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It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
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Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it – likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
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In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
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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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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
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Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL