Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.