35 Quotes by Madeleine Ryan

The old and the dead are the most rewarding people to idolize, because they know things that we don't.

Focusing on our inner world has no social currency. I mean, no one is standing around waiting to congratulate us for stopping to feel how we feel, and to consider what we want, and to question why we choose to behave in certain ways. If anything, our doing this makes others uncomfortable.

Dancing in the rain doesn’t “make sense” and it doesn’t have a specific “outcome.” Well, it does, it’s just that the physical outcome tends to involve being wet, and cold, and needing to go inside, and get warm, and have a shower, and maybe have a cup of tea, which is part of what I like about it.

It's strange to think that we're all here because someone wasn't killed at some point.

Because those who are seen to be physically perfect, symmetrical, handsome, and beautiful by society's standards are here to show us how to feel compassion for ourselves, while those who have physical difficulties are here to show us how to feel compassion for others.

True respect requires communication, and creativity, and the integration of values that at first seem foreign, which then gain meaning as we come to understand and appreciate them.

. . . the fact that people are starving and dying of thirst all around the world has nothing to do with whether or not I eat all of my mashed potato, and everything to do with the fact that billions of us are refusing to build infrastructure that can distribute the earth's resources lovingly and mindfully.

We've given our power over to the material world because it seems more quantifiable and manageable. Our conversations start there, and our conclusions about the world end there. The infinite, miraculous, mysterious nature of who and what we are has become a bit tedious.

People are obsessed with what they don't allow themselves to have, and then they become controlled by it. Forbidden fruit is everyone's main meal.