Victor Frankl

"The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that he can love his wife."

"We cannot live only for ourselves, as a thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men."

"To acquire a sense of purpose and to maintain it throughout one's life is perhaps the greatest success."

"It is precisely the despair of meaninglessness that is the greatest tragedy of aging."

"What is to give light must endure burning."

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"The search for happiness is an obstacle to the attainment of happiness."

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

"An individual's behavior is not simply the result of heredity and environment."

"If we take man as he is, we make him worse. If we take him as he could be, we make him better."

"Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may still choose his attitude toward that fate."

"The will to meaning transcends the individual as he finds meaning through commitment to something beyond himself."

"Happiness is by-product of having found the right meaning."

"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: by creating a work or doing a task, by experiencing something or encountering someone, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

"Life can be made meaningful in spite of—indeed, even because of—its tragic character."

"The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his own existence."

"Nietzsche would agree with me that as long as there is a 'why' for life, there is a 'how.'"

"The meaning of my life differs from that of yours just as one face differs from the other."

"In fact, I have become convinced that the angels wear their wings for a reason."

"What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you."

"The only way to keep one's integrity is to demand it of oneself at all times."

"A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease."

"Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under the most miserable circumstances, decide that his existence will not have been in vain."

"Those who say they are hunting for happiness are hunting for nothing."

"The will to pleasure is not what drives us; the will to meaning is."

"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning."

"Three paths to meaning: creativity, experience, and attitude toward unavoidable suffering."

"Freedom of will may be restricted, but not taken away."

"Self-transcendence should be an earning, not a yearning."

"The meaning of life is to make a contribution to others' lives."