Quotessence
Home / Books / Dead Toad Scrolls

Dead Toad Scrolls

Book by Kilroy J. Oldster · 50 quotes · Memoir Writing, Memoir, Self Determination

Filter quotes by topic

AllMemoir WritingMemoirSelf DeterminationWriters On WritingSelf AwarenessSelf RealizationSelf DiscoveryPhilosophy Of LifeSelf DevelopmentPersonal DevelopmentPersonal GrowthWriting MemoirEnlightenmentWriting ProcessIdentityEssayistWritingWriters On ThinkingSelf ImprovementStory Of My Life

Dead Toad Scrolls Quotes

“We are responsible for our own moral being. Shame and guilt spring from discontent with our morality and leading a wasteful life. A person whom rejects societal notions of success, does not believe in a merciful god, and is shunned by the same people whom he studiously avoids, is left with very little to steady their life except for moments of solitude to contemplate the aesthetic purpose of their being. We reaffirm the value of personal existence by working on self-improvement and dedicating our life to achieving purposeful goals.”

SolitudeSelf ImprovementShameGuiltIsolationExileSelf LoathingSelf ResponsibilityDiscontentment
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“While solitude and study are necessary ingredients to understand our place in the world and to achieve an amplified sense of clarity and balance, immersion in natural world and sharing in human interaction is the ultimate source of inspiration and learning. Only by observing, understanding, and respecting nature and by unconditionally embracing, accepting, and loving other people of all stripes, can we experience the full gamut of emotions that makes us human.”

SolitudeEnlightenmentEnlightenment QuotesNature QuotesHumanity QuotesPeacefulnessNatures BeautyPeaceful LifeEnlightenment PrinciplesEnlightenment And Attitude
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“We learn about life by exploring the texture and depth of space that composes our private inner world. In solitude we revisit our wounded feelings, sins, doubts, and deepest despair, replay poignant memories of loved ones, project what we are becoming, and ascertain the purpose of our being.”

Life LessonsMemoriesSolitudeLife Lessons QuotesIntrospectionInner SelfMeaningful LifeIntrospectiveSolitude QuotesPurposeful LifePrivate ThoughtsInner Vampire
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Exile from society allows person to disengage from meaningless activities and develop conscious awareness. A person’s courageous struggle to eliminate the trepidation of social exile produces insights into what it means to be human. We can displace emotional disquiet by living a heightened state of existence. How a person’s resolves the tremendous anxiety and dizziness that impetus comes from contemplating the inevitability of death, human freedom of choice, the moral responsibilities attendant to living in a selected manner, existential isolation, and the possibility of nothingness establishes a governing philosophical framework. A person must not rue ouster from society because release from moral and societal constraints spurs learning and advanced consciousness.”

AwarenessSolitudeAwakeningExileSolitude QuotesSolitude As A ChoiceAwakened MindAwakened SoulAwakening The ConsciousnessSocial Exclusion
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“A person can transfigure the disquiet of solitude in a positive or negative manner. Periods of enforced solitude can cause a person to develop eccentricities of conduct and character, parley with a number of mental aberrations, partake in self-destructive diversions, or use their time productively to contemplate worldly issues and diligently work on self-improvement.”

SolitudeSelf ImprovementSelf Improvement QuotesSolitude QuotesSolitude Quotations
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Freedom is a blessing and a curse. People of all nations treasure the notion of personal liberty, but freedom creates the coincident anxiety of choosing how a person should live. If I desire to find personal happiness, I need to understand what happiness is and learn how to rid myself of unhappiness. Is happiness an endurable material or is it comprised of no more than a string of good fortune? Is the good luck that brings happiness a fortunate happenstance that may evaporate at any moment? Do we measure happiness in the present? Alternatively, is happiness determinable only when looking at the sum and substance of a person’s total life? Is the game of life ultimately a losing proposition for all persons, and if so, is happiness even achievable or is it a form of an illusion? Is happiness simply a temporary mental reprieve from an inevitable period of suffering that serves as a prelude to our final dance with death? Is happiness a matter of quality of life or quantity, i.e. longevity? Can we measure happiness objectively? Alternatively, should we subjectively compute our scale of happiness?”

HappinessChoicesFreedomHappyLifestyleQuality Of LifeFreedom Of ThoughtLifestyle QuotesHappiness In LifeHappiness Choices
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“It can be disconcerting when people around us change. Family members and especially parents frequently resist acknowledging transformation in other family members. Depending upon the nature of the personality modification, they might even resent if it a family member changes as any fundamental personality revision by a member of a family alters the group’s identity as well.”

ParentsBrothers And SistersFamily RelationshipsFamily MembersFamiliesSelf TransformationSelf IdentityGroup Identification
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Extreme anxiety, fear, exhaustion, and lack of other viable options are what cause a person to surrender everything. Desperation is also the raw material of drastic change. Crisis spurs critical, dramatic shifts in a person’s psyche. Only a person who is willing to lose everything will transform himself or herself. Only by moving outside our comfort zone of the past – letting go of a former being – will a person expand their state of conscious awareness. Now that I am desperate, I am dangerous. I am also ripe for transformation.”

ConsciousnessAwarenessTransformationSelf AwarenessPersonal GrowthDesperateComfort ZoneDesperationSelf DevelopmentChange Your LifeConscious AwarenessTransformation QuotesDesperation Quotes
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“When looking back on our lives, it is difficult objectively to evaluate our actions. When retelling our story, it is challenging to achieve balanced journalism. It is understandable why we might be inclined to overemphasize nostalgic feelings of happiness, glamorize stretches of childhood or other periods where life was rather uncomplicated, while assigning a disproportionate amount of anxiety to rougher periods of life. When we create strong, joyous memories, we preserve cherished feelings in the present. By assigning selective pleasant memories to the past, we create a homey place where we can return to visit. Fondness for nostalgic memories provides a buffer from existential threat, improves mood, combats loneliness, increases social consecutiveness, and enhances self-regard.”

MemoriesNostalgiaMemoirWriters On WritingMemoir WritingStory Of My LifeWriters On ThinkingSelf Evaluation
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“We cannot turn back the clock and relive cherished pastimes. We move beyond our origins. A person must make their way in an evolving social, political, and economic world order. We must not be too quick writing off the influence of our prior experiences, because the long tentacles the past remain vibrant strands within us. While the past does not cast our future in stone, its durable mold shapes our present. The ingrained strumming of our personal histories, sentimental or otherwise, also portents what might come along in our future.”

PastFutureNostalgiaPresent MomentPresentFuture QuotesPastimes
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“I haughtily dismissed the principles sponsored by philosophers, religious leaders, and the ideas of poets in exchange for seeking financial stability and shallow happiness. I imported into my conceited consciousness the values of a freewheeling American society, a culture that fawns on rich and famous celebrities, applauds fantastic risk-taking, and promotes a permissive lifestyle. I lack serious ambition – romantic or practical – to achieve any intellectual or spiritual worthwhile accomplishments. Decrepit and friendless, I am so lost that I do not even know what bellwether I seek. I went astray by callously disrespecting the life sustaining lessons handed down by our ancestors. Only by stripping myself of the rank costume cloaking personal shame, a remorseful suit of motley skin that I stitched together by living a selfishly tailored life, can embark on a journey to discover a better way to live.”

RegretMemoirRemorseJourney Of LifeMemoir WritingJourney Of Self DiscoveryVision QuestSelf Discovery JourneySelf Discover
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“No person is mistake free. I made some phenomenal errors in the first fifty years of traversing the rivers and valleys that formulate life’s marshy banks. I will always live with some deep regrets. Personal mistakes are part of everybody’s learning processes. Some people do live more carefully than other people do. I was too reckless at times and on other crucial situations too conservative, neither of which factor is a cause for mortification. It would represent a much bigger mistake never to give myself the freedom to test what life proffers.”

RegretMemoirRegretsJourney Of LifeMemoir WritingWriting MemoirRegret QuotesJourney Of Self DiscoveryRegrets Of The Past
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Perhaps human beings are incapable of living without experiencing the blue-tinged taste of loss, failure, and regret. If incidents of remorse, shame, and guilt are unavoidable, perhaps the most we can hope for is to suffer from the type of regrets that hurt least. Sydney Smith (1771-1845), an English wit, writer and Anglican cleric said, ‘Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

RegretRegret QuotesRegretfulRegrets Of The PastRegrets Of Yesterday
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“The negative feelings of anger, bitterness, guilt, regret, resentment, and sadness represent a failure of a person to accept that the past is an event that holds no power over the present. The thought that the future will bring salvation is an illusion. We must exist in the present.”

PastSadnessRegretFutureAngerGuiltPresent MomentBitternessResentmentPresentAnger QuotesPresent Moment QuotesPresent Moment LivingGuilt Quote
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Choosing any particular lifestyle is disquieting. Decision-making requires giving up something and believing in something. I abhor making choices because I am greedy and insincere. I might create a stronger sense of self if I made conscious choices, by selecting what truly matters in my life, by dedicating my very being to a central precept. I remain unengaged with any stabilizing concepts and my self is in a constant state of changing. I spend time composing a self, only to turn about and destroy my unsatisfactory self, resulting in a continual state of making and revamping my sense of self. Just when family members and friends think they know who I am, I drastically change. People cannot love or even profess affection for a flaky person such as me, a Proteus-like elusive sea creature that is in a constant state of metamorphosis, a person they cannot pin down or pigeonhole as a specific type of person. My staunch refusal to commit to any permanent membrane ensures that I will always remain unknown and therefore unloved and unlovable.”

ChoicesIdentityLifestyleDecisionsDecision MakingChoices And ConsequencesLifestyle QuotesDecision Making QuoteSelf Construct
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Each person must design their life-defining tests, determine the best way to accomplish their goals, and dare overcome any obstacles. Our life story is a reflection of our resolute progress of tackling an unyielding personal obstacle course. Because work plays an instrumental role in our lives as adults, what we choose as an occupation will greatly affect our final form and determine our resilience to change.”

ChoicesChallengesDecisionsLife ChangingLife ChoicesLife ChallengesLife PlanLife DecisionsLife DefiningLife Test
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Self-reflection enables every person to alter the trajectory of their personal storyline by reviewing a series of episodic occurrences and making value judgments regarding the past. How we perceive our history colors the present, our deeds of today script the future outcome of individual persons, and the outcome of many people making conscious decisions using their cognitive processes including the ability to remember and share memories influences the direction of human development and the progress of society.”

HumanityMemoriesConsciousnessMemoirDecisionsSelf Reflection
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“A person must live in harmony with his or her inner self while recognizing a vital connection to the entire world. A quiet and virtuous mind can live contently no matter what their circumstances, because they do not spend their precious time engaged in worthless faultfinding. Like all despairing men, I need to cease expecting anything from life while expecting more from myself. I aspire to find beauty and joy in the humblest of human activities. I must learn how to ride the clouds and mist, be unperturbed by the petty disputes of humankind, and imperious to other people’s unfavorable opinion of me.”

MindfulnessHarmonySerenitySereneQuietnessBalanced LifePeaceful LifeConnecting With Other PeopleConnecting With Nature
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“The author explores the contours of a restless mind racked with fear and doubt and questions the origins of his personal disenchantment and cynical bitterness. Do other people share similar feelings of disquiet and despair, and how does a person escape a vortex of suffering? Perchance he can marshal human beings’ innate gifts of memory, language, and consciousness to transform his vile existence. Perhaps by studiously examining the self and seeking to unite all disparate parts of a fragmented psyche, he will become a thoughtful, considerate, and affectionate man who lives joyfully without pangs of pain, shame, and misgivings. The goal of this vision quest is to attain personal harmony with the world and enjoy an admirable state of attentive mindfulness after investigating and expressing all that is sayable pertaining the meaning of existence and the unique features of being human. The author aspires to discard frivolous attachments, pierce mental delusions, and attain a peaceful state of serenity by accepting reality and appreciating the incomparable beauty of this magnificent world and the little pleasures that each unfolding day affords. Perhaps writing of his struggles to transcend his own pain and develop the wisdom and serenity of the mind that comes from living an examined life might even provide a template for other people explore their own life story.”

TransformationMemoirSerenityWriters On WritingWriting ProcessMemoir WritingLife StoryStory Of My LifeLife StrugglesExamined Life
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Human life is inherently dualistic. It consists of or is explicable as two fundamental entities, including rivalries between subject and object, mind and matter, and conflict between the benevolent and the malevolent forces. Opposition in the universe creates a dynamic living universe composed of good and evil, body and soul. Human thoughts and feelings are the communal products of the conscious and unconscious mind’s interpretation of a constant flow of coded and symbolic dialogue.”

LoveEmotionsConscienceLove Quotes And SayingsGood And EvilFeelings And EmotionsDualityThoughts On LifeForces Of NatureUnconscious MindDualismGood And Evil QuotesBody And SoulDuality Of OppositesDualistic ThinkingFeelings And PerceptionsDual Core
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Feelings and emotions as well as thoughts and opinions are evanescent; they change over time because they reflect our transient being. Feelings and emotions are judgments that spring from the hidden source of the unconscious mind, and only take on power whenever the conscious mind acknowledges them, and then chooses to convey an idea in some format that shares the rhythm of a person’s own being with another person. Unuttered thoughts and inexpressible feelings experience a short half-life. Without proper nourishment, voiceless thoughts wither and indefinable feelings wane. Lucid thoughts and inexpressible feelings form imperceptible currents that propel us along in our inimitable journey exploring the tributaries of the stream of life.”

LoveFeelingsLove QuotesEmotionsLove Quotes And SayingsFeelings And Emotions
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Death is the great equalizer of human beings. Death is the boundary that we need to measure the precious texture of our lives. All people owe a death. There is no use vexing about inevitable degeneration and death because far greater people than me succumbed to death’s endless sleep without living as many years as me.”

DeathDyingDeath And DyingDying Last WordsDying QuotesDying WordsDeath And Dying QuotesDying With Dignity
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Humble people are respectful and accepting of our imperfect human nature. Many inexplicable components make up the vast sea of humanity. My own psyche contains enigmatic elements. Through conscientious studying other people and examination of my own unfathomable nature, I hope to gain a better understanding of the mystery of existence. There are limitations of human knowledge. We have a rich stable of resources available to us including the opportunity to read great literature, inspirational books, self-help books, scholarly psychology books, and a growing trove of cognitive sciences books devoted to exploring how the human brain works. Despite the illustrious resources that expound upon the desires, motives, and behaviors of the human species, the hardships of life frequently force us to realize we are the principal subject that we must study and understand in order to mend a broken personality. In order revive a deflated psyche and transcend into a better and sunnier version of the self, I need to know myself.”

HumilityHumbleHumblenessSelf CriticismHumility QuotesSelf ExaminationHumility In GreatnessHumility And PurposeHumility Quote
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Shedding an independent, individualistic sense of self, is an apt place to start when remaking oneself. The task of divesting my egoistic coat-of-arms requires that I first understand how I came into being, ascertain how a person forges a baseline personality, and discover how I can modify my template for self-construal. I need to surrender an arrogant sense of self-importance, acknowledge towering ignorance, and learn how to live humbly. I hope to parlay personal humiliation and self-hatred into a transformative act by invoking a spiritual death of my egotistical being that results in a resurrection of a more astute and kinder human being.”

HumilityResurrectionHumiliationSelf TransformationSelf HateSelf TranscendenceEgo DeathSpiritual Death
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Narcissistic pleasure seekers routinely avoid developing the humility required to manufacture a life of full measure. Shallow persons such as me hide their insecurities behind a false persona of bravado, boasting of their inconsequential deeds, pyrrhic victories, and adamant refusals to tackle any task that they fear.”

HumilityPrideInsecurityNarcissismMeaningful LifePurpose Driven LifePurposeful LivingBravadoBoastingBoastfulEgoistBoastfulnessBoasting QuotesPersonal Insight
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“When people pass on we must choose how to remember them. While our loved ones sleep for eternity we must carry on with our daily toil. We can elect to harbor adoration and love in our precious memories or cling to animosity and detestation. We can kindly remember our ancestors or continue to feel embedded enmity towards people who no longer walk this earth. Regardless the human frailties of the recently departed, it seems that we should aspire to clutch the best part of our ancestors being fast to our hearts. A book encapsulating a departed person’s life has many pages; we must choose which chapters to treasure and what chapters to disregard or downplay.”

DeathDeath And DyingRemembranceAdorationAnimosityAnimosity Quotes
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image