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Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.
Charles Bukowski
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Everyone you encounter has their own struggles, so it's important to treat them with kindness and understanding.

This quote by Charles Bukowski reminds us that those we see daily, perhaps in passing on the streets, carry their own burdens and stories. Despite their hardships, it is crucial to show kindness, as they, like us, are navigating through life's challenges and searching for hope.

Themes

KindnessHopeCompassionUnderstandingStruggles

In practice

Example use cases

During a community meeting discussing homelessness, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of kindness.

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I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide. I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide.
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when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns
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The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for.
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I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.
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To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane.
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I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there.
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Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.
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Men may have given millions of dollars and fed rats and cats, as some do in India. They say that men can take care of themselves, but the poor animals cannot. . .
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Quote by Charles Bukowski | QuoteProject