Quotes about Life

Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.

we could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom.

Suffering ceases to be suffering when it finds meaning

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw his life away.

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. 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 of life in a general way.

there is a 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.

To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances--because life itself is--but it is also possible under all circumstances.

Men, in general, misunderstand the meaning of death. When the alarm clock goes off in the morning and frightens us from our dreams, we regard this awakening as a terrifying intrusion upon our dream world and do not realize that the alarm arouses us to our real existence, our day world. Do we mortals not act similarly, being frightened when death comes? Do we not also misunderstand that death awakens us to the true reality of ourselves?

Even if you don't expect anything from life, doesn't life expect something from you?

The transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibility; for now everything hinges upon our realizing the transitory possibilities.