Thinking about life, what it means and what it holds in store can be an enlightening and uplifting experience. This wise and illuminating book aims to give us invaluable 'sketch maps' to what is truly important in living life, whether one is facing success, failure, passion, intolerance, love, loss or any other of life's profound experiences.

' Grayling writes with clarity, elegance and the occasional aphoristic twist, conscious of Standing in that long essayistic tradition that runs from Montaigne and Bacon to Emerson and Thoreau '. — Sunday Telegraph

' This is a book to be dipped into and savoured over time... deeply humane and subtle in its thought as well as being imbued with a rare spirit of enlightenment '. — Financial Times

Anthony Grayling teachcs philosophy at Birkbeck College, London and is a Fellow of St Anne's, Oxford. He reviews frequently in the Financial Times and has a regular column in Prospect.