This is a book that can be opened anywhere and give you words that you will love. It includes great thoughts that will guide you in life. Every day of your life you have the opportunity to sit down with someone who will educate you in whatever way you wish, someone who will make you laugh, someone who will make you cry in a way that makes you more grateful for the life you have, someone who will help you overcome the obstacles in your life by showing you how she overcame similar obstacles in her life, someone who expresses your feelings in ways that help you better understand who you are, someone who will show you what it takes to become a hero, a failure, a sinner or a saint; you will have the opportunity to DISCOVER, and all you need to do is . . . read! Every once in a while we stumble upon words that touch us, that resonate with us, that make us reread them over and over, and over again. Because we feel them change us. Or, at least, because they make us begin to want to change. And yet, those same words haunt us days later because we have lost them somewhere in the recesses of our mind. We have forgotten them. We may still recall their essence. We may recall the lesson. But we can't recall the language that sent us, momentarily at least, into a world where we felt awe. Which is a world in which we feel awesome. Instead, we find ourselves in a world of frustration. "What was it," we ask ourselves, "that Emerson said that so encapsulates the value-and pleasure-of knowledge?" "What was it that Mark Twain said about a cat sitting on a hot stove?" "What was it that Abraham Lincoln said he would do for the first 4 hours if he was given 6 hours to chop down a tree?" You knew it once. You read it once. But where? And how many opportunities have you had since, to share it, to delight the minds of others with a neat story, a neat quote, at a perfect moment-only to be silent, searching for the words, and coming up short? And then there are those other situations where you know that tomorrow a subject will come up. You remember reading somewhere the perfect words related to that subject. But you not only don't remember the words, you don't remember the book you read them in. So much for tomorrow. You had hoped to be quick, and, instead, you were quiet. Well, hopefully, this book will help you. You may not remember everything, but there will be words that stick with you. And you will be happier for them. If you love to read, if you love to discover and learn, you will absolutely love this book. You can't read it without, at some point, feeling the words were hand-picked for you. We can all identify with Steve Martin's observation that "Some people have a way with words, and other people, oh, uh, not have way." The first thing this book does is help you think better, about better things, but what it may also do is help you express those thoughts in ways that you always wished you could. You might have searched for years to find the great thoughts that are captured here, but, instead--in one volume--you have the opportunity to reflect with some of the best minds on Acceptance, Attitude, Character, Choices, Compassion, Courage, Faith, Forgiveness, Friendship, Happiness, Humor, Imagination, Language, Life, Love, Parental Encouragement, Parenting, Perseverance, Reading and Self-Reliance. Enjoy!