Examined Life Quotes

“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“If truth is what you seek, then the examined life will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and leave you by the side of the road with your truth and nothing else.”
― Thomas Ligotti , The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“Remember, you're not half of anything, you're twice of everything.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“for the unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates

“The unexamined life is not worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining.”
― Andrew Klavan, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ

“Men of Athens, I honor and I love you, but I will obey the god rather than you and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet.”
― Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates

“An over examination of life can deter you from life itself”
― Ilyas Kassam

“Thurough examination will do the healthy no harm, and it may bless the sick.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“Taking a lot of selfies doesn’t mean you live an examined life.”
― Gina Barreca

“...when somebody says, “I regret nothing,” it’s like you’re willfully not confronting your life. You’re leaving your life unexamined. And I think there’s something in our society that says, Yeah, don’t examine it. Be heedless. Here’s a checklist. Occupy your time and be productive.

I mean, what does it say about us that we regret nothing?”
― Wajahat Ali

“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.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“This scroll is my personal obituary, a journal that documents my time toiling on this rocky orb. I labored to say who I am, how I lived, and frame the troubling questions regarding what I seek. I wrote in order to penetrate illusions, address the tedium of existence, gain insight into my true nature, and give conscious shape to the vestiges of a tormented man. I used this written journey of the mind to explore all prior reference points of self-identity and toiled to meld the disharmonious components of a fragmented psyche into a wholesome human being. Writing was a tool employed to use conscious suffering mercilessly to suppress a caustic ego and resurrect a more inclusive, synthetic, and unitive consciousness that no longer wants for anything or suffers from the travails of life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“How much time do you devote to thinking each day?”
― Simone Weil

“One who pans for gold can't expect to dip up only gold, or even attempt to. He must blindly scoop the sand from the river bottom. He doesn't have the privilege of finding out in advance whether he will succeed. Maybe there's no gold in it, but maybe there is. Yet the one thing certain is that the person who doesn't pan for gold never gets any richer.”
― Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love

“A person has numerous resources available for learning including observing nature and witnessing how other people behave. We can examine other people lives to find clues how to live, but ultimately we must develop a personal code of living a sterling existence.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Other people make their life count, but I did not achieve fame or fortune, and whiffed any chance to attain personal happiness. My life is bereft of romance, compassion, and mental equanimity. It is a vile thought, but I detest my being. There might be some pleasure that other persons derive from declaring oneself an insufferable human being, but I loathe myself for leading a wasteful and directionless life. I am drowning in angry spatter and cannot go on living without examining why existence seems so absurd. Without a clear purpose in mind to shape and provide soothing contexture to a lifetime journey, it is preposterous to slog through the knee-deep sand of the daily drudgery. Why would anyone want to continue living a barren life that leaves a person utterly depleted? What could my pathetic existence possibly accomplish when there is no indication that other people need or depend upon me? Why would anyone tolerate the travails of life unless their daily struggle counts for something beyond merely satisfying their physical requirements and fulfilling their superficial needs for frequent dosages of assuaging entertainment?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Self-knowledge enables a person to grasp what future decisions will define their final formation. The human mind habitually hits the rewind button and replays past events. Can looking back over the rim of time and engaging in thoughtful criticism of the precursor events of my formative years be of any possible assistance to expose the indurate truth of factual reality? Can I employ the tools of memory and imagination along with the techniques of logos – reasoned discourse – to escape strife and pathos? Does it make sense to write the story of my life so that I can ascertain who I am? With these unsettling thoughts and these maieutic questions in mind, I began writing an enantiomorphism-like scroll. The crystal molecules that comprise this text construct a mirror that replicates the multiple dimensions of a risky adventure into self-psychology. I harbor no expectation regarding the outcome of this reflective venture. Regardless of the consequences, all I can do is follow the psychic flow generated by this writing enterprise. I do not know where this positional analysis will take me or how this psychodynamic field study will end. I am simply dedicating all remaining personal energy reserves to capitulating to a tornado-like process of self-study, a turbulent procedure with an unpredictable outcome. Perhaps something sensible will result from deploying a series of narrative personal essays to deconstruct the parasitic evolution of an egocentric self.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writing is a joint enterprise of the mind and body. Writing requires application of mental discipline and demands great personal patience. Writing is an educational process that other persons successfully deployed to explore the external cultural milieu and probe their inner landscape. Writing is the hand-wielded tool that I opt to employ in order to ferret out myself and discern my place in the world. I will use the writer’s tools to analyze my reprehensive personal behavior, using of a lever of words in an attempt mentally to manipulate my internal intellectual gears. Documentation of the arched calligraphy of the landscape demarking my physical journey in life and scripting the final configuration of my intellectual intertexture is the goal of this multifaceted writing venture.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“I write not to justify a portfolio of personal failures. I do not seek to moralize or cast blame for my follies and catastrophes upon other people. I do not seek to malign other persons when documenting a series of unpleasant personal encounters in an unyielding society. I desire to overcome myself. I write in an attempt to alter my worldview, calm the soul, find serenity, extinguish hatred, and discover those elementary feelings of wellbeing which subsist permanently in humankind, which are independent of culture, race, class, and time. I write in an effort to discover the moral sublimity underlying existence. I write in order to understand myself and to transfigure myself. Writing is my attempt to rise beyond the facileness of my prior existence. I write in an effort to transcend the prodigious pain of living a profligate life. I write in an attempt to transmute my personage from that of an ordinary toad who despises all of his visible warts. I write in an attempt to decipher how to overcome a penchant for personal aggressiveness and brutality and become kind and gentle. I write in an attempt to discover how I can become a wise person who courageously faces the obstacles of life and exhibits grace and poise in the horror of his blackest days. I write to create an artifact of an intact and pacific persona.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Each day I attempt to establish a conjugated ring of reasons to rise tomorrow. Each day I seek to engage in some audible act of faith reaffirming a spiritual warrior’s commitment to living. Each day when engaged in investigative writing, I seek to perform some testimonial act that will lead me towards achieving desirable, premeditated change. Each day that I dabble with writing a deliberative memoir requires a scathing examination of how I lived. It also demands scrupulous assessment of how I want to live the remainder of an unspooling life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“We learn about ourselves by taking one footstep at a time along a road of discovery. Greek philosopher Heraclitus who lived around 500 BCE proffered cogent advice about how to acquire wisdom and achieve a proper perspective on all worldly events. ‘Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for truth, be ready for the unexpected. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one.’ This script tells of one man’s journeying a full circle in an effort to become one with all that exists.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Only fiction can lend scope for life's full play.”
― BS Murthy

“In the forest canopied with the leafy niche of daily events, a benevolent listener reverberates in the canonical poetry of the ages humming irrepressible visceral contradictions. A squall of tears of bereavement pierces the elegiac sea of a silent night. The red-rimmed eye of sunrise greets us with a torrent of rage spilling over from frontlines of an examined life’s vital quarrels. The flute of life ushers in a welcoming breeze of reassuring resonance.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“This past year many people wanted to “return to normal” but what if we used this disruption as an opportunity for transformation? This moment is begging us to become present and examine what might not be working anymore.”
― Natalie M. Esparza, Spectacle: Discover a Vibrant Life through the Lens of Curiosity

“Study so well that the examiner will be tempted to use answers as the marking scheme not the annoying scheme.”
― Ned Bryan Abakah

“Only fiction can lend scope for the full play of life”
― BS Murthy

“There are all these things that you never know whether they're features or bugs- in a company or organization, or even in a personal trait. I'm interested in lots of different things. I'm interested in business but also economics and philosophy and literature. I always like to rationalize that as helping me think about things better, or that these things are interdisciplinary. But maybe it's just being a dilettante or procrastinating and not ever really getting focused.”
― Peter Thiel

“The examined and the unexamined life are equally worth living. Or maybe they’re not.”
― Jay Sreekumar

“There’s a great deal that’s funny about advice, though the halfwits too feel they have a great deal of advice to offer”
― B.S. Murthy, Benign Flame: Saga of Love

“Novels expose man to the nuances of life through the thought process of their protagonists to form the foundation for its understanding and thus are the best self-help books there ever were.”
― B.S. Murthy, Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life