Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

• A life of short duration...could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  3079

• The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.120, Beacon Press

  952

• Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.82, Beacon Press

  1324

• When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. . . . He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.64, Beacon Press

  4738

• Happiness must ensue. It cannot be pursued

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E Frankl (2011). “Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning”, p.90, Random House

  3684

• The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.74, Beacon Press

  993

• 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.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.114, Beacon Press

  3323

• In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray of a dawning morning in Bavaria. "Et lux in tenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.37, Beacon Press

  3227

• Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  485

• Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  "Man's Search for Meaning". Book by Viktor Frankl, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1946.

  2531

• It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.56, Beacon Press

  457

• Man's search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  2882

• Sports allow men to build up situations of emergency. What he then demands of himself is unnecessary achievement - and unnecessary sacrifice. He artificially creates the tension that he has been spared by affluent society.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2011). “The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism”, p.108, Simon and Schuster

  4234

• In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as delusion of reprieve. The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away. all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  3567

• You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  3261

• Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.87, Beacon Press

  2079

• 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.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  2745

• Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.87, Beacon Press

  2321

• At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.120, Beacon Press

  4111

• As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2011). “The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

  3940

• Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  923

• Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2011). “The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

  1338

• Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.35, Beacon Press

  3854

• 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

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.102, Beacon Press

  2732

• 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

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.113, Beacon Press

  1411

• 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

  2775

• The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  784

• Success is total self-acceptance.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  1048

• 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

  Viktor E. Frankl (2014). “The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy”, p.46, Penguin

  590

• No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.55, Beacon Press

  274

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