Over the years, author David Allen Williams has savored a vast body of literature; here he provides a sumptuous sampler from this inspiring banquet of ideas. On page after page, readers will find a unified call to reason, tolerance, and freedom of expression in opposition to the forces of ignorance, supernaturalism, and dogmatism. This feast for the mind combines savory morsels from over eighty of the world's most often read and frequently quoted authors with examples of rare nineteenth-century engravings that visually capture the powerful ideas conveyed. This edifying cornucopia includes among its intellectual harvest the powerful thoughts of: Aristotle, Matthew Arnold, Marcus Aurelius, Francis Bacon, Cicero, Joseph Conrad, Charles Darwin, Diogenes, John Donne, Will Durant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Epicurus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Edith Hamilton, Eric Hoffer, Homer, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Jefferson, Lucretius, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, George Santayana, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, H.G. Wells, and many others.