If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.

Thus, human existence-at least as long as it has not been neurotically distorted-is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly.

Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

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.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.