Top 500 Kilroy J. Oldster Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Life is the one riddle that is denotative, referential. Although every person shares a common ultimate destiny, each person must work out their own life, script their own personal salvation, and wrestle with the fear and trembling that is inherent when we consider our mortality.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

152. “Existential anguish derives from the human freedom to think and act, experience love for life, and fear death. We must decide whether we wish to embrace all experience and encounters in life or seek escape from various aspect of human nature. How we resolve to address existential anguish becomes a large part of our personal story.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

153. “We hold within ourselves the medicinal materials to mend self-inflicted injuries sustained while traversing the thorny obstacle course of life.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

154. “People cannot escape the looming specter of a deathwatch and the imposing emptiness that comes with the termination of their existence. People resist going silently into the night. We seek to howl at the moon and make known our search for a diagrammatic overture that voices our unquantifiable existence.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

155. “The artistic creation of the poet, painter, photographer, and writer is a reflection of the artist’s inner world. The agenda of consciousness that spurs all forms of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but to portray its inward significance to the creator. A great poem, painting, photograph, and written composition fully express what the creator feels, in the deepest sense, about the distinctively depicted image that captured their imagination.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

156. “We are all the products of nature composed with essential elements. Every natural force has an opposite. The components of earth, wind, water, and fire comprise nature. Similar to nature, we contain complementary, contradictory, and counterpoising elements.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

157. “Rudeness is a means to attract attention, assert power, cover-up ineptitude, deflect personal insecurities, and intimidate meeker people.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

158. “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.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

159. “We each possess the ability creatively to respond to the ontological mystery of our existence.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

160. “Personal essay writing is analogous to undertaking a vision quest, a potential turning point in life taken to discover intimate personal truths, form complex abstract thoughts, and ascertain the intended spiritual direction of a person’s life.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

161. “We bring happiness into the world one day at a time by accepting pain and returning understanding and compassion.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

162. “Suffering is an essential component of life. No person escapes suffering, which is indivisible from life itself. Suffering is what places in in contact with the self; it is what allows us to understand the spiritual nature behind our existence.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

163. “Pain is essential for survival, pain is the tangible material that creeps into our mind and screams at us to recognize that something is terribly wrong.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

164. “Reality does not create the entire womb of human life. We have eyes that witness truth and beauty. We are creatures that think, plan, dream, and remember. The lambent luminescence supplied by human memory reveals that we live in a dream world. Human imagination tied to memory tells us how to live today and forevermore.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

165. “A person desires to achieve the apex of his or her potentiality.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

166. “Without opposition, there could be no creation. All life would cease without resistance. Emotions also have their polar opposites: attraction – repulsion, love – hate, aggression – meekness, and mercy – callousness.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

167. “An emotionally locked person refuses to let go of their sad memories and live in the now.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

168. “Personal discontent and lost illusion is the catalysis and the principal theme for every book ever written. The sign of maturity is when a person finally realizes that they would rather live truthfully than persist indulging his or her comforting delusions.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

169. “Humankind’s perpetual affinity for telling stories that depict the weal of life shapes and reflects human consciousness. Stories are the most ancient form of art. All societies, from the tribes scratching the earliest cave drawings, employed the art of storytelling. We hunger to hear other people’s stories and to tell our own stories to an appreciative audience.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

170. “We achieve emotional equanimity and self-control by discovering how to live in accord with our capabilities, character, and evolving ethical values.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

171. “Writing is a method to stanch a person’s deepest lacerations.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

172. “Disquietude that springs from the fundamental nature of being a human being is vaster and more encompassing than depression, which has a cause and therefore a cure.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

173. “We live mindfully by harvesting evocative scenes to pay attention to including the mountains and oceans, flowers and trees, love and friendship, music and literature, art and poetry.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

174. “Self-mastery epitomizes the height a person’s of measureable success. Conversely, we can gauge the depth of personal failure by a person’s degree of lack of self-control and self-abandonment.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

175. “Being is not full transcendence. We learn about ourselves by discovering our imperfections. Experience corrupts any romantic notions that we ever held of achieving perfection. We must live with our limitations and our imperfections. We must cherish the blemishes in people who we love.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

176. “A person desires to lead a self-constructed life rather than live a life duplicating other people’s footsteps.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

177. “As we go through life, we essentially grow a personality. Our personality branches out in many directions to assist us organize our thoughts, feelings, values, ideas, and coping mechanisms. Our exhibited behavior – the way we organize and deal with life – becomes an external representation of our central self.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

178. “Attempting to succeed in a competitive external environment, we can lose track of how to live without anxiety.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

179. “A liberated person abdicates from society’s expectations and embraces living an authentic life undeterred by external determinates.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

180. “The ability to experience bliss requires the gift of attentive awareness, curiosity, and constant learning. We are ultimately the product of what we want – our personal obsessions – and how we think. Thoughts merge into feelings that determine if we are happy or sad. Feelings can manifest into thoughts that drive our ambitions and guide our personal actions, which enable us to live an intensified life.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

181. “The universe is eternal; every person appears in the stream of time, and then disappears. The ego does not survive. Life is significant despite that it ends. The products of human life that we cherish – love, happiness, beauty, art, kindness, – have value without being everlasting. We must conquer human fearfulness in order to live a dignified life.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

182. “All writing is essentially autobiographical because our composed thought patterns reflect our accumulated life experiences. At some level, every type of work, whether it is literature, poetry, music, painting, photography, sculpture, or architecture, is always a portrait of the creator. We cannot escape ourselves any more than we can outrun our shadow.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

183. “A person experiences anxiety when they realize their insignificance in the cosmic field, which present state of angst can exacerbated by other confusing life questions.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

184. “We each sketch the story of our lives. We tell other people whom we have become by making decisions how we carry out our daily affairs, how we confront personal crisis, and when we extend comfort to other people. By talking about our secret dreams, we reveal who we hope to become. Writing changes us. A sentence on paper reflects not only who we now are, but it also exposes who we used to be.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

185. “The fresh and crisp air of the country reminds us that our blood surges from of the natural world and how tied we are to the sprung rhythms of earth and sky, weather and season.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

186. “Our most potent memories include the taste and smells of foods we enjoyed as a child in part because it reminds us of who fed us a meal.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

187. “Writing is part of life, but it is not part of the ordinary busyness of life.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

188. “A personal essay is probably the most malleable form of writing style, because it enables a writer to engage in a felicitous conversation with oneself. The more formal rules that govern academic writing are largely inapplicable to personal essay writing. Personal essays are free from the forbidding cadence and rigid structure of thesis writing. A personal essay’s lilt reflects the movement of the writer’s mind.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

189. “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.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

190. “At some point in life every person encounters haunting feelings of loneliness, because the feeling of being alone and withdrawing deeply into the inner self is part of the human condition. A person might choose to countenance or even cultivate their loneliness and turn the poignant hours of unerring solitude into poetry of their soul.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

191. “Love, reverence, and adoration, are multifaceted emotions. Similar to a painting by an artist, how we respond to a beautiful woman, nature, and the world that we encounter reveals the spectator and not life.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

192. “Living is a constant process of debunking our romantic notions of how our personal life will unfold. Reality oftentimes fails to meet a person’s glamorous expectations.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

193. “Human life is an incongruous combination of tragedy and comedy.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

194. “The only recourse for an escape artist from world affairs is to explore their inner sanctum where hopes, dreams, insecurities, and despair collide.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

195. “Maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and sensations occurring in the present moment is essential to comprehend and appreciate the beauty of existence. Living in the moment in a non-judgmental manner allows a person to accept what is without wasting emotional energy and valuable time wishing or hoping for something besides objective reality.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

196. “A person who accepts that they are condemned to death and who holds no belief in a god created afterlife is a realist.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

197. “A wise person strives to reach self-transcendence by engaging in delicate contemplation, while avoiding the snare of self-denigration’s negative invocation. An overshadowing sense of a caustic self can be destructive, whereas an encircling sense of a kindhearted self allows a person to express the profundity and elation of a feral creature curiously exploring nature’s glorious playground.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

198. “Every plant, tree, and animal is a blessing and every person has a purpose for living. Courage, curiosity, and generosity produce noble spirits. Enduring life honorably results in wisdom. Knowledge passed down from one generation to the next along with humankind’s tradition of performing charitable and self-sacrificing deeds creates principled legacies for future generations to emulate.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

199. “In any important relationship, we must always ask should we stay or leave. Perchance the correct answer exits in the reason for hanging on and the reason for finally moving on. Perchance self-sacrifice is required. Conversely, perhaps selfishness is called for as an act of self-preservation.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

200. “We cannot achieve personal enlightenment – a clarification of our souls – until we cease deluding ourselves. We must accept that life includes witnessing and personally experiencing pain.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster