“We have absolutely no control over what happens to us in life but what we have paramount control over is how we respond to those events.”
More from Viktor Frankl on Life
“When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
“Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.”
“Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”
“A life of short duration...could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.”
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
“Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.”
“Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Others on Life
Jonathan Safran Foer
22 quotes“One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second”
Mitch Albom
18 quotes“Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
16 quotes“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”
Henry Miller
15 quotes“We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”
Lord Byron
14 quotes“The great art of life is sensation to feel that we exist even in pain.”
Cormac McCarthy
14 quotes“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn...”
Virginia Woolf
14 quotes“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
Joseph Campbell
14 quotes“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive...”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
13 quotes“Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”
Søren Kierkegaard
13 quotes“Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.”
Margaret Atwood
13 quotes“Surviving Is the only warWe can afford”
Sarah Dessen
13 quotes“All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control....”