Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.
The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
A human being is a deciding being.
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self’s actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.
I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.
The struggle for existence is a struggle ‘for’ something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.
One can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.
Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.
Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.