Quotes About Meaning

The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.

The meaning of my life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.

Logos is deeper than logic.

el amor trasciende la persona física del ser amado y halla su sentido más profundo en el ser espiritual, el yo íntimo.

I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.

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.

haber sido es también una forma de ser, quizá la forma más segura de ser.

Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

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. Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why—an aim—for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence.

man is not he who poses the question, What is the meaning of life? but he who is asked this question, for it is life itself that poses it to him. And man has to answer to life by answering for life; he has to respond by being responsible; in other words, the response is necessarily a response-in-action.

But 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.

We also do not judge the life history of a particular person by the number of pages in the book that portrays it but only by the richness of the content it contains.

He who knows the 'Why' for his existence is able to bear almost any 'How'.

Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.

De modo que la logoterapia considera que la esencia de la existencia consiste en la capacidad del ser humano para responder responsablemente a las demandas que la vida le plantea en cada situación particular.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium.

There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.

greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health.

Las palabras de Nietzsche «quien tiene un porqué para vivir puede soportar casi cualquier cómo» podrían ser la motivación de todos los esfuerzos psicohigiénicos y psicoterapéuticos de los prisioneros.

Terrible as it was, his experience in Auschwitz reinforced what was already one of his key ideas: Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term "striving for superiority," is focused.