What man actually needs is 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.
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.
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.
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.
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.
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.
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
Despair is suffering without meaning.
The question, O me! so sad, recurring – What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here – that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
I would say that life at 84, I am having as much fun as I’ve ever had in my life. I mean I get to do what I love every day with the people I love-and it just doesn’t get any better than that.
The adventure of life is to learn...
The meaning of life is that nobody knows the meaning of life.
I’m twelve years old. I run into a synagogue. I ask the rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life but he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don’t understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me $600 for Hebrew lessons.
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.
The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.
Listen – are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
People and stars are made of the same stuff.