Happy Birthday, Mister Rogers

Some quotes for some neighbors

On my calendar, I mark the birthdays of some of my heroes. One of them is Fred Rogers, better known as Mister Rogers. Today is his birthday.

In honor of his birthday, I read through The World According to Mister Rogers, a collection of his quotes, and picked some of my favorites.

On knowing ourselves:

Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.

On falling short:

Some days, doing “the best we can” may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect—on any front—and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.

On choices:

You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.

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 success:

The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing… and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.

On imperfection:

Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren’t perfect.

On love:

Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.

On growth:

There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.

This is a small sample. The book is loaded with earnest quotes.