...being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneselfโbe it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himselfโby giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to loveโthe more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.... What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.
Viktor E. FranklManโs main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
Viktor E. FranklThen I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
Viktor E. FranklThere 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.
Viktor E. FranklIn a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray of a dawning morning in Bavaria. "Et lux in tenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness.
Viktor E. Frankl