Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics is experienced in the truth of life, and it then appears as the only proposition of salvation which one can address to men.

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.

Meaning is man-created. And because you constantly look for meaning, you start to feel meaninglessness.

Through the ages, man's main concern was life after death. Today, for the first time, we find we must ask questions about whether there will be life before death.

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

One of my favorite books is 'Man's Search for Meaning.'

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran, Pleasure with pain for leaven, Summer with flowers that fell, Remembrance fallen from heaven, And Madness risen from hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.

We're all born lost, aren't we? We're all born separated from God - over and over life makes sure to inform us of this - and yet we're all real: we have names, we have lives. We mean something. We must.

Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.

life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand, we find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness.

As long as one suffers one lives.

Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end.

We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.

When I am battered and oppressed by the world that humanity has made - which is difference from the world that is was given - my primary defense, my consolation, is the absurdity of that world

Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.

From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity.