Viktor E. Frankl Suffering Quotations

Once an individual's search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering

The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.

Despair is suffering without meaning.

I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed; 2. by experiencing a value; and 3. by suffering.

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 a 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 carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

To suffer unecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

If there is 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.

This is the core of the human spirit ... If we can find something to live for - if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives - even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.

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