This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, I am here--I am here--I am life, eternal life.'
Desolation | Existence | Imagination | Important | Life | Life | Memory | Mind | Past | Poverty | Spirit | World |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
You would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful. Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
The very moment when my friend came back, the camp gate was thrown open. A splendid, aluminum-colored car, on which were painted large red crosses slowly rolled on to the parade ground. A delegate from the International Red Cross in Geneva had arrived, and the camp and its inmates were under his protection. The delegate billeted himself in a farmhouse in the vicinity, in order to be near the camp at all times in case of emergency. Who worried about escape now? Boxes with medicines, were unloaded from the car, cigarettes were distributed, we were photographed and joy reigned supreme. Now there was no need for us to risk running towards the fighting line [in order to try to escape to the allies through the fighting line].
Contemplation | Love | Man | Nothing | World | Contemplation |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoners existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered...
What matters deafness of the ears when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.
Will intoxicates. One can become intoxicated with one's own soul. This intoxication is called heroism.
World |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Only to the extent that someone is living out this self-transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.
World |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or Shema Yisrael on his lips.
Achievement | Angels | Belief | Contemplation | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Nothing | Poetry | Position | Right | Salvation | Thought | Time | Truth | Wisdom | World | Contemplation | Thought | Understand |
A well behaved and cultured scholar always possesses auspicious wealth i.e. earned from good means.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I was lying on the hard boards in an earthen hut where about seventy of us were 'taken care of.' We were sick and did not have to leave camp for work; we did not have to go on parade. We could lie all day in our little corner in the hut and doze and wait for the daily distribution of bread (which . . . was reduced for the sick) and for the daily helping of soup (watered down and also decreased in quantity). But how content we were; happy in spite of everything. While we cowered against each other to avoid any unnecessary loss of warmth, and were too lazy and disinterested to move a finger unnecessarily, we heard shrill whistles and shouts from the square where the night shift had just returned and was assembling for roll call. The door was flung open, and the snowstorm blew into our hut. An exhausted comrade, covered with snow, stumbled inside to sit down for a few minutes. But the senior warden turned him out again. It was strictly forbidden to admit a stranger to a hut while a check-up on the men was in progress. How sorry I was for that fellow and how glad not to be in his skin at that moment, but instead to be sick and able to doze on in the sick quarters! What a lifesaver it was to have two days there, and perhaps even two extra days after those!
Achievement | Contemplation | Man | Nothing | Position | Right | World | Contemplation |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. Therefore, we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable.
All other tastes are bland and insipid; through them, the body and mind are rendered insipid as well.
Consequences | Ignorance | Men | World |
Listen to Me. When you wake up, feel that you are entering the stage to play the role assigned to you by the Lord; pray that you may act it well and earn His approbation.
World |
Love cures pettiness, hate and grief. Love loosens bonds; it saves man from the torments of birth and death.
That which is born has also to die; coming implies going; that which has no birth has no death either.
God is one but the ways to reach Him are many.
Follow 'this' path... it is easily accessible and the cart can move freely on it.... treading on which the brave ones do not get vanquished and which also provides better prospects for earning wealth.
Conscience | Love | Will | World |
Society cannot progress unless each citizen make his contribution and performs his duties.