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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.

Viktor E. Frankl

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
It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Condition Meaning Men Search
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
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

Believe Greatest Quests Task Taught
…to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Answers Meditation Thinking
Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Causes Dedication Sides
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Above Altering Known Life Rise Well
Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Effort Men Spiritual
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
It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Happiness Pursuit Thwart
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Believe Liberty Mean
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
Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Being Kind Perhaps Surest
God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Intimate Partners Solliloquies
Ultimately, we are not subject to the conditions that confront us; rather, these conditions are subject to our decision … we must decide whether we will face up or give in, whether or not we will let ourselves be determined by the conditions.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Condition Confront Decision Faces Giving
Sleep [is like] a dove which has landed near one’s hand and stays there as long as one does not pay any attention to it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Hands Long Sleep

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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