568 Quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    Happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

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  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration... Existential frustration is neither pathological or pathogenic.

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  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. 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.

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  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

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  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright.

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  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    Both I and my troubles became the object of an interesting psychoscientific study undertakenby myself. What does Spinoza say in his Ethics?—"Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passiosimulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to besuffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

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  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    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.

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  • Author Viktor E. Frankl
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    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.

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