The School of Life is an organisation with a focused mission at its heart: to help foster calm, self-understanding and greater emotional maturity. Over 15 years, we have produced landmark essays on key topics, now gathered together for the first time. Among these, we find: On Confidence: a guide to throwing off inhibition and shame in the name of a more free and creative life Self-Knowledge: a method for knowing ourselves better in order to make optimal choices in love and work Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person: a paradoxically hopeful and wry survey of the trials and joys of marriageIn elegant and always clear prose, the essays take us on a tour around the central topics of emotional life, leaving us enlightened, calmer and readier to greet our inevitable challenges.

The book amounts to nothing less than a concise compendium of some of the wisest things we'll ever need to know.