A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
For too long a time--for half a century, in fact--psychiatry tried to interpret the human mind merely as a mechanism, and consequently the therapy of mental disease merely in terms of technique. I believe this dream has been dreamt out. What now begins to loom on the horizon is not psychologized medicine but rather those of human psychiatry. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
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. (Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning")
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, "Man's Search for Meaning")