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If there is 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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Life's meaning is intertwined with suffering; both are essential to the human experience.

Viktor E. Frankl reflects on the concept that suffering is a fundamental aspect of existence. He suggests that to understand life and its meaning, one must acknowledge the inevitability of suffering and death, as they contribute significantly to the depth and completeness of human experience. By embracing this perspective, one can find purpose even within the pain that life brings.

Themes

SufferingMeaningLifePhilosophyDeath

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech about resilience and the human spirit.

More from Viktor E. Frankl

Then 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.
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The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God.
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Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
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It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
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Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.
Viktor E. FranklRead
The more one forgives himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
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