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"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person." -- from The World According to Mister Rogers. A timeless collection of wisdom on love, friendship, respect, individuality, and honesty from the man who has been a friend and neighbor to generations of Americans. There are few personalities who evoke such universal feelings of warmth as Fred Rogers. An enduring presence in American homes for over 30 years, his plainspoken wisdom continues to guide and comfort many. The World According to Mister Rogers distills the legacy and singular worldview of this beloved American figure. An inspiring collection of stories, anecdotes, and insights -- with sections titled Understanding Love, The Courage to Be Yourself, The Challenge of Inner Discipline, and We Are All Neighbors -- The World According to Mister Rogers is a testament to the legacy of a man who served and continues to serve as a role model to millions.… (more)
User reviews
This book is divided into four parts – ‘The Courage to Be Yourself’, ‘Understanding Love’ (my favorite section), ‘The Challenges of Inner Discipline’, and ‘We Are All Neighbors’. A charming bonus is the Foreword by Mrs. Rogers which gave light to a touch of Mr. Roger’s personal life. You are unlikely to connect to all his thoughts, but you will certainly fall deeply into some.
On Solitude:
“Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn’t have to be a lonely kind of thing.”
On “Rise-Up” – There are so many ways to apply this, from anti-bullying to the current political climate:
“The values we care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.”
On Aging:
“All life events are formative. All contribute to what we become, year by year, as we go on growing. As my friend the poet Kenneth Koch once said, ‘You aren’t just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!’”
On Love as Acceptance:
“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
On Crying:
“People have said, ‘Don’t cry’ to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, ‘I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.’ I’d rather have them say, ‘Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.’”
On Grandparents – I don’t know mine, and I’ve always known I’ve missed some things on account of it:
“Grandparents are both our past and our future. In some ways they are what has gone before, and in others they are what we will become.”
On a Balanced Relationship – This one is so true. Recognizing and accepting this truth will make relationships healthier:
“Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other’s achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain. We need to accept the fact that it’s not in the power of any human being to provide all these things all the time. For any of us, mutually caring relationships will also always include some measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance, pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment.”
On Love as Infinity:
“Love is like infinity: You can’t have more or less infinity, and you can’t compare two things to see if they’re ‘equally infinite’. Infinity just is, and that the way I think love is, too.”
On Blessings:
“The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them. Some have few and give everything away.”
The Publisher Says: A timeless collection of wisdom on love, friendship, respect, individuality, and honesty from the man who has been a friend to generations of Americans There are few personalities who evoke such universal feelings of warmth as Fred Rogers. An enduring
My Review: By the time Fred Rogers hit the screens of American educational TV, I was too old (in my own opinion) for the baby stuff. Silly child, eh what? When I rediscovered him I was in my teens, going through a nasty depression that I wouldn't admit WAS a depression, and Fred Rogers soothed me like no one else could. Calm, cool, collected; reflective, curious, engaged; ideal company for my heavy, angry mood.
Years drifted by, events in the world took me away from the problem-solving peacefulness of being Fred Rogers' neighbor until somewhere around 1992. Another very bad time drove me (accidentally) to the neighborhood, welcomed as always by Fred Rogers' earnest, gentle lessons. All unknowing a life was in the balance, Fred Rogers let me be his neighbor until I was ready for meatier, grittier, less safe life experiences again.
This quote book offers the meat of the Rogers Experience to an older audience than he served in life. It's a wonderful grazer's delight sort of book, designed to emphasize the wisdom of its offerings by positioning one per page. It's never a good idea to gobble a quote book the one can with novels and suchlike. In this collection's case, it is a worse idea than usual: Remember that Fred Rogers was a childrens' show host, and inclined to hone, polish, and deliver information and lessons simply and directly. It's not always exciting, but it is always informative and soothing.
I treasure Mister Rogers. I miss the gentle voice and the comforting sameness of new shows. With this collection of wisdom and guidance, though, I can still feel the warm long-distance hand-holding love that was this great man's gift.
This book is a series of quick-hit quotes and stories, very rarely over one page long, that capture the essence of who Fred Rogers
I loved a lot of the things Mister Rogers (I just can't not call him Mister Rogers!) said in this book. Although he devoted his life to teaching and serving children, this really isn't so much a children's book as it is a book for the adults who remember Mister Rogers and his show from their childhoods. I could hear him saying a lot of the things, and, whenever there was a song quoted, I could hear his softly lilting voice. It brought back some great memories.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from this book:
I'm proud of you for the times you came in second, or third, or fourth, but what you did was the best you had ever done.
Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
I do love being a grandfather, and I wonder if it wasn't because my grandfather McFeely loved me so much, and I had such a good time with him.
I hope you're proud of yourself for the times you've said "yes," when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to somebody else.
This is one of those books that I would like to purchase eventually, to come back to over and over again when I'm in need of a little help through the day. It's always good to know that you've got a friend in Mister Rogers.
My rating: 10/10
My favorite TV memory of Mister Rogers isn't from his show; it's from Candid Camera. The crew hid a camera in hotel rooms, including Mister Rogers', to capture their reactions when they learned that there were no TVs in the room. This didn't bother Mister Rogers at all. Peter Funt disguised as a hotel employee wasn't able to provoke reaction from him. He maintained the same calm, courteous, and kind demeanor in what he believed was a private conversation that he had on his television show. That's integrity.
It's a quick read, as it is designed like most "words of wisdom" books with a single quote per page, or some times multiple pages for longer quotes. Included are
Mr. Rogers, along with the Muppets, was a major part of my childhood, so this book is a welcome addition to my library and something I"m sure I'll be coming back to often when I need a little encouragement.
A few quotes that stood out to me:
“When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the facade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.”
“It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.”
My favorite part was the introduction which was written by Mr. Rogers's wife and included stories of his upbringing, how they met each other, and what he was like off-camera. Turns out that he was so work-oriented that she often wondered if he was actually enjoying himself. (I really hope he was.) If you're looking for a positive lift (and I don't know why you wouldn't) then this is the perfect little book to leaf through. His message was always clear and never more so than in this little book which reminds us to always be kind and never shy away from talking about feelings with the children in your life. A simple enough concept but one which we need to hear now more than ever. 8/10
I think this is probably the best
This is just a private note to myself of passages of main interest. Pages 12, 14, 15, 20,21,22, 27, 28, 29, 31,32,34, 38, 40, 41, 42, 46, 47, 51, 53, 55, 57, 74, 78), 83, 87, 92, 93, 101, 102, 105, 107, 109, 111, 112, 113, 126, 129, 130, 131, 142, 143, 146, 156, 161, 163, 164, 167, 170, and 177.