Quotes About Meaning

EL DESTINO, UN REGALO La actitud con la que un hombre acepta su destino y el sufrimiento que este conlleva, la forma en que carga con su cruz, comporta la singular coyuntura —incluso en circunstancias muy adversas— de dotar de sentido profundo a su vida. Puede conservar su valor, su dignidad, su generosidad o, arrastrado en la amarga lucha por la supervivencia, puede olvidar su dignidad humana y actuar como un animal, como sucede con los prisioneros de los campos.

Freedom, we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the years we dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours.

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.

According to logotheraphy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

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:

Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning.

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.

Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

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

Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them.

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 if I had to die there might at least be some sense in my death.

I said that someone looks down on each 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.

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.

All this came to my mind when I saw the photographs in the magazine. When I explained, my listeners understood why I did not find the photograph so terrible: the people shown on it might not have been so unhappy after all.

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.

According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.

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.

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.