Quotes about Existence

life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.

I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence.

He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how.

Man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is ever ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.

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

Regarding our "provisional existence" as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless.

People have enough to live by but nothing to live for.

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.

Suffering ceases to be suffering when it finds meaning

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.

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?

What is actually man's concern is not to fulfill himself or to actualize himself but to fulfill meaning and to realize value. And only to the extent to which he fulfills concrete and personal meaning of his own existence will he also fulfill himself. Self-fulfillment occurs by itself; not through intention but as effect.