I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.

The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs." "That was it, exactly," Frankl said. "Those are the very words I had written

It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.

Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel anymore. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such common place sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him anymore.

Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

I knew that in a working party I would die in a short time. But if I had to die there might at least be some sense in my death. I thought that it would doubtless be more to the purpose to try and help my comrades as a doctor than to vegetate or finally lose my life as the unproductive laborer that I was then.

Love is living the experience of another person in all his uniqueness and singularity.

Obviously the prisoners found the lack of character in such men especially upsetting, while they were profoundly moved by the smallest kindness received from any of the guards. I remember how one day a foreman secretly gave me a piece of bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast ration. It was far more than the small piece of bread which moved me to tears at that time. It was the human something which this man also gave to me - the word and look which accompanied the gift.

They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, Take it. This is my life.

Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then—our friends are not able to finish their stories.