Quotes from Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning

Too much quotes to collect for Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning:

p.28
In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as "delusion of reprieve." The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad.

p.42
Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner's psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell.

p.47
Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one's own life and that of the other fellow.

p.57
The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

p.60
"Et lux in tenebris lucet" (Light in darkness shines.)

p.63
Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

p.86
the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

p.87
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually.

Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."

It is this spiritual freedom - which can- not be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

p.87-88
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. 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. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

p.94
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.

p.97
"He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how, (Nietzsche)

p.98
it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

p.103
Nietzsche: "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker." (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)

p.104
Nietzsche: "Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben." (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.)