Quotes About Existence

He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how.

As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners.

In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose.

we must learn to see life as meaningful despite our circumstances. It emphasizes that there is an ultimate purpose to life. And in its original version, before an appendix was added, it concluded with one of the most religious sentences written in the twentieth Century:

if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: 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.

Man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is ever ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.

El hombre no está absolutamente condicionado y determinado, al contrario, es él quien decide si cede ante determinadas circunstancias o si resiste frente a ellas… El hombre no se limita a existir, sino decide cómo será su existencia, en qué se convertirá en el minuto siguiente.

to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?

But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

But Frankl's concern is less with the question of why most died than it is with the question of why anyone at all survived.

YaÅŸamak ac? çekmektir; yaÅŸam? sürdürmek, çekilen bu ac?da bir anlam bulmaktad?r. EÄŸer yaÅŸamda bir amaç varsa, ac?da ve ölümde de bir amaç olmal?d?r. Ama hiç kimse bir baÅŸkas?na bu amac?n ne olduÄŸunu söyleyemez. Herkes bunu kendi ba??na bulmak ve bulduÄŸu yan?t?n öngördüÄŸü sorumluluÄŸu üstlenmek zorundad?r.

Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.

The Latin word finis has two meanings: the end or the finish, and a goal to reach. A man who could not see the end of his "provisional existence" was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life. Therefore the whole structure of his inner life changed; signs of decay set in which we know from other areas of life.

Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

Freedom is not something we have and therefore can lose; freedom is what we are.

Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, "The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning.

Regarding our "provisional existence" as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless.

Mientras esperábamos la ducha se nos hizo patente nuestra desnudez, en su sentido literal: éramos solamente un cuerpo. Nada más. Solo poseíamos la existencia desnuda. ¿Qué

some of the prisoners attempted to find one on their own. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future—sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.

Frankl approvingly quotes the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

People have enough to live by but nothing to live for.

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.

Viktor E. Frankl