Fred Rogers, Life's Journeys According to Mr. Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way, 2005.

A nice collection of thoughts that were important to Mister Rogers, after a charming introduction by his wife. It's much like the one I reviewed shortly after I started this blog, and my thoughts about this one are much the same now as they were then.

A couple of the aphorisms that struck me:

I need thinking time when someone asks me
a searching question.  I wonder why it seems
to be so uncomfortable for many people to
wait through the silence.  People of all ages
have deep feelings, and if we have the
patience to wait through the silence, it's
often astounding what people will tell us.  (45)

As a relationship matures, you start to see
that just being there for each other is
the most important thing you can do, just being
there to listen and be sorry with them, to be
happy with them, to share all that there is
to share.   (68)

How our words are understood doesn't
depend just on how we express our ideas.
It also depends on how someone receives
what we're saying.  I think the most
important part about communicating is the
listening we do beforehand.  When we can
truly respect what someone brings to what
we're offering, it makes the communication
all the more meaningful. (78)

Where would any of us be without teachers--
without people who have passion for their
art or their science or their craft and love it
right in front of us?  What would anf of us
do without teachers passing on to us what
they know is essential about life?  (94)

The most important moments are rarely in
the bright lights with the cameras rolling and
mikes recording.  The most important
moments are rarely center stage; the most
often happen "in the wings."
Have you found that to be true, too?  That
what you expected to be the big occasion or
the main event turned out to be merely an
excurse for you to be somewhere in order to
be touched by something you might have
otherwise considered of little importance?  (137)

Mister Rogers exemplifies a lot of what I think I'd like to be, as a person. And though I often find this sort of collection to be a touch trite, this one never slips into that trap. It's worth a read.

François de la Rochefoucauld, Reflections; Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665).

It is an odd sort of collection that takes as its object wisdom or advice. Yet it is indeed a long-standing one, indeed, that one can even find within most religious books.

La Rochefoucauld's collection, like most others, causes me to stumble, while reading; I find that my eyes glaze over after reading an aphorism or two, and I have trouble distinguishing one maxim from the next.

My conclusion remains that maxims are useful only in two cases: to inspire self-reflection, or to have a quotation to slip into something one is writing. Certainly, they are of no use in advance, and their wisdom is only really perceptible in retrospect.

An aphorism or four, for your amusement and your own collections:

¶ 122
If we resist our passions, it is oftener because they are weak than because we are strong.

¶ 250
True eloquence means saying all that is necessary and only what is necessary.

¶ 259
The pleasure of love lies in loving, and our own sensations make us happier than those we inspire.

¶ 330
We forgive to the extent that we love.

¶ 344
Most men, like plants, have hidden characteristics that chance brings to light.

¶ 379
When our integrity declines, our taste does also.

¶ 486
Those who have had great love affairs are forever glad, and forever sorry, that they have ended.

First Supplement, #VIII
If we cannot find peace inside ourselves, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.

Third Supplement, #XCII.
It is more necessary to study men than books.

Another post about another book that my mom brought home for me to read.
When I was very little, I loved the TV show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood [sic; Silly Americans.] So. The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember, by Fred Rogers, seemed to be calling out to come home to visit me, my mom said. [N.B. the link is to amazon.com, not amazon.ca, so that you can see a picture & a review.]

It's a short, cute little book.
Each page has a pithy aphorism from Mr. Rogers. Now, normally, I loathe and detest inspirational aphorisms. These ones, however, aren't in-your-face, or overly annoying. They are optimistic, but they're more thoughtful then most of the genre.
It was a cute book, and it made me smile. It made me remember cardigans, and Daniel Stripèd-Tiger, and King Friday XIII, and the trolley that led to the neighbourhood [my description, so a proper spelling this time] of make-believe: I never liked it as much when he just put models of the buildings on the kitchen table.

Nostalgia can be fun.