Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

M]eaning must not coincide with being; meaning must be ahead of being; meaning sets the pace of being. Existence falters unless it is lived in terms of transcendence toward something beyond itself.

human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position.

giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward.

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. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

El sentimiento que se convierte en sufrimiento, deja de serlo en cuanto nos formamos una idea clara y precisa del mismo.

Where the spiritual self steeps itself in its unconscious depths, there occur the phenomena of conscience, love, and art. Where it happens the other way around... we have to deal with a neurosis or a psychosis, depending on whether the case is psychogenic or somatogenic.

Meaning must be found; it cannot be given. And it must be found by oneself, by one's own conscience.

About conscience - sense of right / wrong) No one will be able to make us believe that man is a sublimated animal once we can show that within him there is a repressed angel.

The transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibility; for now everything hinges upon our realizing the transitory possibilities.

U]ltimately it is not up to man to ask about the meaning of his life. Instead, man must be understood as someone who is asked; that is, life itself asks him, and he has to answer—his existence has to respond.

And just as the animal is at times misled by the vital instincts, so may man go astray... whereas the ethical instinct alone enables him to discover the unique requirement of a unique situation

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental

Meaning is relative inasmuch as it is related to a specific person who is entangled in a specific situation. One could say that meaning differs in two respects: first, from man to man, and second, from day to day—indeed, from hour to hour.

Ä°nsan?n gerçekte ihtiyac? olan, gerilimin olmad??? bir durum deÄŸil kayda deÄŸer bir hedef, özgürce seçilmiÅŸ bir görev uÄŸruna uÄŸraÅŸ ve mücadeledir. Ä°htiyaç duyduÄŸu ÅŸey, ne pahas?na olursa olsun gerilimden kurtulmak deÄŸil, onun taraf?ndan kar??lanmay? bekleyen potansiyel bir anlam?n çaÄŸr?s?d?r.

Indeed, it is the lack of discrimination between causes and conditions that allows reductionism to deduce a human phenomenon from, and reduce it to, a sub-human phenomenon. Indeed, reductionism may be called sub-humanism. However, by being derived from a sub-human phenomenon the human phenomenon is turned into a mere epiphenomenon.

In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way— in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. 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.

Si no sabes cuál es tu misión en la vida, ya tienes una: encontrarla.

Meaning is missing in the world as described by many a science. This, however, does not imply that the world is void of meaning but only that many a science is blind to it. Meaning is scotomized by many a science.

Reality presents itself always in the form of a specific concrete situation, and since each life situation is unique, it follows that also the meaning of a situation must be unique. Therefore it would not even be possible for meanings to be transmitted through traditions. Only values– which might be defined as universal meanings— can be affected by the decay of traditions… to put it succinctly: the values are dead–long live the meanings.

Spiritualism is no less a one-sided world view than materialism. Monism, be it spiritual or material, does not so much disclose the alleged oneness of the world as it betrays the one-sidedness of its own view.

Ä°ddia ediyorum ki dünyada en kötü koÅŸullarda bile hayatta kalabilmek için hayat?n bir anlam? olduÄŸu bilgisinden daha etkili olabilecek bir ÅŸey yoktur. Nietzchhe`nin ÅŸu sözleri çok ÅŸey söyler: YaÅŸamak için bir nedeni olan her türlü nas?l`a katlanabilir.

I cannot be guilty of something that other people have done, even if it is my parents or grandparents.

O]ne may define values as those meaning-universals which crystallize in the typical situations a society—humanity—has to face.

The more comprehensive the meaning, the less comprehensible it is. Infinite meaning is necessarily beyond the comprehension of a finite being. Here is the point at which science gives up and wisdom takes over.