Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

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

But it is not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favours his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

At such a moment it is not the physical pain which hurts the most, it is the mental agony caused by injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.

Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.

Man is that being which invented the gas chambers; but he is at the same time that being which walked with head held high into these very same gas chambers, the Lord's Prayer or the Jewish prayer for the dead on his lips.

we know: the best of us did not return.

It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.

man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his 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. I

The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the prisoners in spite of all the camp's influences, and, on the other hand, the baseness of a prisoner who treated his own companions badly was exceptionally contemptible

I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one's closest friends alive lost its value.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his 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

La experiencia indica que el sufrimiento es parte sustancial de la vida, como el destino y la muerte. Sin ellos, la existencia quedaría incompleta.

I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself.

Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue

Tam bir yaln?zl?k konumunda, insan kendini olumlu eylemle dile getiremediÄŸi, çektiÄŸi ac?lara doÄŸru bir tav?rla -onurlu bir tav?rla- katlanmaktan baÅŸka yapacak hiçbir ÅŸeyi olmad??? zaman, sevdiÄŸi insana iliÅŸkin içinde ta??d??? imgeye sevgiyle yoÄŸunlaÅŸarak doyuma ulaÅŸabiliyordu.

tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.

Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: of hundreds of thousands of people reach out firma book whose very title promises to deal with the questions of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn

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. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete

With the end of uncertainty there came the uncertainty of the end