Emily

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. 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. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carried of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words: 'the angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.'"

I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out; but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“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. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. What man actually needs 1s not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load that is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So, if therapists wish to foster their patients’ mental health, they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surrounding? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors - be they of a biological, psychological, or sociological nature? Is man but an accident product of these? Most important, do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influence of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?

The experience of camp life shows that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember men who walked through huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Happiness cannot be pursued, it must be ensued. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, one becomes happy automatically. Human beings are not in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy through the actualization of the potential meaning inherent and dormant in any given situation. Once an individual’s search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capabilities of coping with suffering.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning