Quotes About Perseverance

people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself.

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

Even if things only take such a good turn in one of a thousand cases, my explanation continues, who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place, you have to live to see the day on which it may happen, so you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.

It was in the nature of this sacrifice that it should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the world of material success.

must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what

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 the prisoners.

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

when we saw a comrade smoking his own cigarette, we knew he had given up faith in his strength to carry on, and, once lost, the will to live seldom returned

Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben." (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being.

Et lux in tenebris lucet

for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only

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 the prisoners.

I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible." Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to the discovery of meaning? In no way. I only insist that meaning is available in spite of—nay, even through—suffering, provided, as noted in Part Two of this book, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic.

the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future. And

the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.

verja del campo y un flamante camión, de color aluminio

Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt

If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevski's statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how.

and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you'. Not only our experiences, by all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

When we are no longer able to change a situation— just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer —we are challenged to change ourselves.

If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevski's statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, "Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how." But our psychological investigations have not taken us that far yet; neither had we prisoners reached that point. We were still in the first phase of our psychological reactions.

He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how