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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

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Expression Motivational
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
It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Happiness Pursuit Thwart
…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
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Limits Men Self Ultimately
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!
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Children Clothes Wife
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Beloved Mans Meaning Search
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Kind Spirit Suffering
There are two races of men in this world but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Decent Incident Men Race Two
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Boredom Existential Vacuum
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
The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Away Choose One Thing Way
Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Despite Humans Situation
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Meaningful Purposeful Something Struggle
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
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Bears Men Philosophers
I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

One Pleasant Tasks
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
Man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Fate Inspirational Men
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Frame May Spiritual Views
Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Inspirational Life Motivational
Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Being Kind Perhaps Surest
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Life Meaning Men
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Becoming Men Should
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
Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Detect Gains Men Pain
Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Existential Humanity Psychotherapy

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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