Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

"Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being."

"We must each ascertain our own way to quantify the world. We can choose to peer at life harshly or benevolently. The prism that we select to view the world ultimately is the same standard that we employ to judge ourselves."

"We choose the prism that we use to view life. Life can be a mystical tour or an outright bummer. We can live our life with the taint of aftermath or look forward to embracing each beguiling day with renewed energy and enthusiasm."

"Witnessing the moonrise each month, a person cannot resist noting a modest sense of optimism tugging at his or her enclosed capsule of bodily fluids."

"We each appear only one time in history. Whatever occurs in our life will never occur again. Our life is significant and worthy of living if we are brave, love fearlessly, and remain optimistic regardless of our earthly hardships."

"Storytelling still matters in the digital age, because commencing in adolescences and continuing through adulthood, people receive training in using stories to describe the human contestants, organize the facts, communicate the moral message behind the messy human conflict, evaluate competing ethical issues, and render a final value judgment."

"The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom."

"Every human being carries with them the stories of their ancestors, the story of their generation, and the rudiments of pliable clay to build future storylines that will shape their community of kindred souls. Storytelling unites us as a species and supplies texture to our lives. By listening to other people’s stories and by sharing our personal story, we deftly weave the threads that compose the sacred hoop of the tribe."

"Sharing stories that fill our chambers with an explosion of unique voices is a means to instigate an inclusive exploration of the intricacies of what it encompasses to be human. Stories enable us to comprehend the ultimate concerns of human existence and explicitly address the unalterable part of humanity."

"Both oral and written stories are an important aspect of culture. Stories are a ubiquitous component of human communication. People use stories to explain historical events and to illustrate ideology. Stories teach ethical principles through parables."

"Storytelling is an ancient art. The lucent vibes of stories express what we cannot articulate directly. When we hear someone’s story, we respond to the spark of humanness within ourselves that seeks to come out in the light and greet the world. When we tell the stories of our lives, we give voice to people bereft of speech, we make the persons whom we love or loved immortal, and we pass along our familiarity with the natural and physical world."

"High performers whom exhibit tremendous self-control tend to be burden by their own competence. Studies indicate that being extraordinary competent can place a person under an unusual amount of stress because it raises other people’s expectation of them. The more task that an exemplary employee produces with a ‘go-getting personality’ while maintaining high quality relationships with peers and clients, the more an organization tends to underestimates their actual effort and the more it expects of them. Other people do not comprehend how difficult it is for a high performer to complete multifaceted tasks. They also tend to underestimate how much effort an enterprising person exerts who maintains a positive and pleasant attitude while completing difficult assignments."

"Growing old is humbling and it takes effort to accomplish this stage of life with dignity."

"Personal dignity begins by accepting responsibility for our actions, acting humbly, and extending compassion to other people. Personal humility requires choosing living with quietness of the heart over living in the depths of animosity, despair, and discord."

"Life never ceases having a meaning for a humble person. The freedom of choice, the sovereignty that we hold over our own souls, enables a person to discover the meaning of his or her own life every day, even in suffering or death."

"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."

"We can learn personal humility from episodes that generate shame and guilt. After retiring from worldly affairs and drawing useful lessons from personal disgrace, we must resume living an expedient life devoted to appreciating truth, beauty, and love."

"Any attorney with a conscience always speaks the truth. An attorney can and should practice law in a scrupulous manner, but some dishonest attorneys disregard ethical mandates in order to win. Unethical attorneys shape their clients stories, which is a fancy way of assisting them tell a fib."

"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."

"An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature."