Viktor E. Frankl: Quotes about life

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Source: book Man's Search For Meaning

Cute , Powerful , Life

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Life , Fate , Way , Suffering

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. 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. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

Love , Life , Wisdom , Truth

“The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Life

“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 book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Life

“If there is a 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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 67 in the 1959 Beacon Press edition

Life , Death , Fate , Suffering

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Source: Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust

Life , Pleasure

“There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 126 in the 1984 Pocket Books edition

Life , World , Knowledge , Help

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, 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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)

Life , Question

“But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning?”

Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (1997)
Context: It is true, Logotherapy, deals with the Logos; it deals with Meaning. Specifically I see Logotherapy in helping others to see meaning in life. But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning?

Life

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Life , Suffering

“A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Life , Disease , Despair

“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

Love , Life , Joy

“Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.”