Book excerpt: An essential, obsessive collection of all those wise and quirky sayings we’ve heard before—plus plenty of essential, obscure ones to discover—now all in one place. With words of comfort and motivation, humor and warmth, here are thousands of proverbs, precepts, maxims, adages, and axioms—8,789 of them, to be precise—that prove just as true today as the day they were coined. Polished over years of use, there’s the unexpected, the playful, even the counterintuitive. Learn to unlearn. Appreciate the questions as much as the answers. Stretch beyond what is comfortable. Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. Every page contains secrets and encouragement to lead a happy, healthy, sane, and productive life; taken altogether, it’s the ultimate source of inspiration for personal growth.