Quotes About Fulfillment

It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness. Happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue. Happiness is available only as a by-product, as the side-effect of living out the self-transcendence of existence.

You don't retire from a job (which may have become stale) but to an activity that is meaningful to you.

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, and it only does so as the unintended  side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. Humans are rather in search of of a reason to be happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent in a given situtation.

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

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.

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.

He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us.

the fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so.

But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right then all our lives would be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else – preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which already seems obvious to us.

he says: I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked – and behold, duty was joy.

It was Kierkegaard who told the wise parable that the door to happiness always opens 'outwards', which means it closes itself precisely against the person who tries to push the door to happiness 'inwards', so to speak.

78% said their first goal was finding a purpose and meaning to my life.

Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.

Our industrialized society is out to satisfy all needs, and our consumer society is even out to create needs in order to satisfy them; but the most human of all human needs—the need to see a meaning in one's life—remains unsatisfied. People may have enough to live by; but more often than not they do not have anything to live for.

As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

Armastus on ülim eesmärk, milleni inimene võib jõuda.

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

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.

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... as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.