Quotes About Adversity

After all, "saying yes to life in spite of everything," to use the phrase in which the title of a German book of mine is couched, presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable.

Nietzsche: "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker." (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)

One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive.

al hombre se le puede arrebatar todo, salvo una cosa: la libertad humana —la libre elección de la acción personal ante las circunstancias— para elegir el propio camino.

Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

Varying this, we could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of prisoners.

that, in spite of this, I had no intention of losing hope and giving up. For no man knew what the future would bring, much less the next hour. Even if we could not expect any sensational military events in the next few days, who knew better than we, with our experience of camps, how great chances sometimes opened up, quite suddenly, at least for the individual. For instance, one might be attached unexpectedly to a special group with exceptionally good working

Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstance, hurt more than one that finds its mark

not about cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it. That

Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.

There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed.

To the others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: "Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

son las circunstancias excepcionalmente adversas o difíciles las que otorgan al hombre la oportunidad de crecer espiritualmente más allá de sí mismo.

that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Son las circunstancias excepcionalmente adversas o difíciles las que otorgan al hombre la oportunidad de crecer espiritualmente más allá de si mismo.

al hombre se le puede arrebatar todo salvo una cosa: la última de las libertades humanas —?la elección de la actitud personal que debe adoptar frente al destino—? para decidir su propio camino.

Psychological observations of the prisoners have shown that only the men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influences.

for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.

when I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated.1 Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.

I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible.

Nenormaliai reaguoti ? nenormali? pad?t? yra normalu.

The destiny a person suffers therefore has a twofold meaning: to be shaped where possible, and to be endured where necessary.

Cualquier hombre, a lo largo de su vida, se verá enfrentado a su destino y tendrá la oportunidad de convertir un puro estado de sufrimiento en una hazaña interior. Piénsese