Quotes About Meaning

Y es precisamente esta libertad interior la que nadie nos puede arrebatar, la que confiere a la existencia una intención y un sentido.

For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.

my daughter at about six years of age asked me the question, "Why do we speak of the good Lord?" Whereupon I said, "Some weeks ago, you were suffering from measles, and then the good Lord sent you full recovery." However, the little girl was not content; she retorted, "Well, but please, Daddy, do not forget: in the first place, he had sent me the measles.

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

What does all this prove? What has come through to us from the past? Two things: everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there are, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being.

Logotherapy deviates from psychoanalysis insofar as it considers man a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts, or in merely reconciling the conflicting claims of id, ego and superego, or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and environment. Noö-Dynamics

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

In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours—a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God—and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly—not miserably—knowing how to die.

One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

Kreativan život i život uživanja zabranjeni su mu. No nisu samo stvaranje i uživanje smisleni. Ako život ima smisla, onda ga i patnja mora imati. Patnja je neiskorjenjiv dio života, ?ak u obliku sudbine i smrti. Bez patnje i smrti ljudski život ne može biti potpun.

In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering.

la salvación del hombre consiste en el amor y pasa por el amor.

Viktor E. Frankl

the opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives.

the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

Viktor E. Frankl

Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself.

This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.

statement is an oversimplification; yet in logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis.

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.

must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours—a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God—and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly—not miserably—knowing how to die. And finally

el hombre no debería cuestionarse sobre el sentido de la vida, sino comprender que la vida le interroga a él. En otras palabras, la vida pregunta por el hombre, cuestiona al hombre, y éste contesta de una única manera: respondiendo de su propia vida y con su propia vida.

the sudden awareness of afigure on a ground, whereas the perception of meaning, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming aware of a possibility against the background of reality or, to express it in plain words, to becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation.