There are books that stay with us because they open something quiet and essential within us. Viktor Frankl writes of the one freedom no circumstance can take away: the freedom to choose our attitude, our way. He reminds us that when life cannot be changed, we are invited to change ourselves; and, that in extraordinary situations, our most human reactions are natural.
Man’s Search for Meaning is a book I return to often. Each reading is a reminder of what matters — presence, and the work of shaping our inner world. One of my all time favourite books.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.
Victor Frankl
My copy is a much older edition but I couldn’t find an image for it.
Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it’s only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there’s life, there’s happiness. There’s much, much still to come.
You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Don’t make yourself small.
I believe in God, only I spell it nature.
What more could one ask of a companion? To be forever new and yet forever steady. To be strange and familiar all at once, with enough change to quicken my mind, enough steadiness to give sanctuary to my heart. The books on my shelf never asked to come together, and they would not trust or want to listen to one another; but each is a piece of a stained-glass whole without which I couldn’t make sense to myself, or to the world outside.
Curating Quietude 