Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

It said to me, 'I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.'

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.

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

A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.

Man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.

In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.

We have absolutely no control over what happens to us in life but what we have paramount control over is how we respond to those events.

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

Success is total self-acceptance.

It is always important to have something yet to do in life.

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.

...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.

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.

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

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

Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.

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

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.

If you call 'religious' a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.

The more one forgives himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.

Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.