The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
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.
Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative”.
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future – sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.
Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.
I think it was Lessing who once said, ‘There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose’. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour”.
This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us, and to those questions we can respond only by being responsible for our existence.