only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
Interpretation
Kindness is an invaluable companion that stays with us in our journey through life.
In this quote, Naomi Shihab Nye emphasizes the importance of kindness as a fundamental quality that not only stands out in a world often filled with indifference but also accompanies us through all aspects of our lives. The imagery of kindness as a shadow or a friend suggests that it is a constant presence, offering support, warmth, and comfort in our interactions and experiences.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the importance of kindness in communities.
It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.
I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know
I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.
A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.
I think whenever you love something or somebody it means that you have to extend yourself, you have to grow - get a little larger. You can't stay in your little comfortable - spot.
As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.
I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?
Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.
I need to be surrounded by people as passionate and as dedicated as I am.
I'll lift you and you lift me, and we'll both ascend together.
When I first met him, he did not care if a friend did not fit into his world, because at that time his world had not been born yet.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min?
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