Meshell Ndegeocello Quotes

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you I will show you fear in a handful of dust

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.

a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.

O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.

What good is money to you if you're going to die? It's not often that money can save someone's life.

I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

Why am I dying to live if I'm just living to die.

Since we are what we are, what shall we be But what we are? We are, we have Six feet and seventy years, to see The light , and then resign it for the grave .

People go on postponing everything that is meaningful. Tomorrow they will laugh; today, money has to be gathered... more money, more power, more things, more gadgets. Tomorrow they will love - today there is no time. But tomorrow never comes, and one day they find themselves burdened with all kinds of gadgets, burdened with money. They have come to the top of the ladder - and there is nowhere to go except to jump in a lake.

...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.

Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

After a few decades, everyone you know will be dead. Problem solved.

In life we sit at the table and refuse to eat, and in death we are eternally hungry.

Life is absolutely unbearable. And we're going to die.

But the truth, he knows, is otherwise. His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float towards his end. He sees it quite clearly, and it fills him with (the word will not go away) despair. The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.

Not to be born surpasses all reckoning. The next best thing by far, when one has been born is to go back as swiftly as possible whence one came.

The Stars are setting and the Caravan Starts for the Dawn of Nothing-Oh, make haste!

What's the point of trying to fix a world we're so briefly in?

The lapse of ages changes all things - time - language - the earth - the bounds of the sea - the stars of the sky, and everything 'about, around, and underneath' man, except man himself, who has always been and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence.

At the end of your life, you cannot take a penny with you. So what is the object of money if you can't take it with you?

Here halt, I pray you, make a little stay. O wayfarer, to read what I have writ, And know by my fate what thy fate shall be. What thou art now, so shall thou be. The world's delight I followed with a heart Unsatisfied: ashes am I, and dust.

Things That Don't Matter When You've Lived the Same Day Six Times and Died on at Least Two of Them: Lunch meats and their relative coolness.

I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself, that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.

We are going to die, as is everyone we adore - I hate this! But the question is, how do we live as women and men in the face of this? Why do we let ourselves be so distracted and obsessed by meaningless B.S. in light of having one short, precious life? When are we going to wake up and be fully alive to each other and nature and magic and wonder and Life with a capital L? When will we stop hitting the snooze button? And then, how alive are we willing to be?