The 24 most beautiful sentences I read in 2024

The 24 most beautiful sentences I read in 2024

How often do you revisit the sentences you underline while reading?

In 2020 I wrote an essay about the 20 most beautiful sentences I’d read that year, and the experience of flipping through the books I’d read to find the passages that struck me was surprisingly cathartic. Every year after, even though it feels a little bit like work, I’ve done this roundup. I’ve learned that it’s one thing to experience beauty, but it’s something else entirely to experience it, reflect on it, then share that reflection.

The 23 Most Beautiful Sentences I Read in 2023

The 23 Most Beautiful Sentences I Read in 2023

Today I am continuing a practice I have done for four years. It started in 2020, the year none of us will forget, when we reached for beauty in unfamiliar ways because so much of the joy in our lives — our loved ones, our families, our hobbies — had been sequestered in lockdown.

One way I sought beauty was by revisiting the books I’d read throughout the year. Thus began my December tradition of collecting the most beautiful lines I’d read in the past 12 months.

This is a cathartic exercise. I can’t tell you how many times I paged through the books I read this year and thought, my god I loved this one. I often found myself reading an underlined sentence, then the paragraph that followed, then the next page.

The Guilt of Feeling Happy and Mantras to Find Your Joy

The Guilt of Feeling Happy and Mantras to Find Your Joy

I am a steadfast habit tracker and goal seeker, always aspiring to do/see/feel/experience more. It’s the way I’m wired; I barely even think about this side of me, I just live into it. But while I’m constantly on the hunt for more, I recognize that I’ve got it pretty good. (I wouldn’t say I have it all, I think it’s crass. It’s also untrue.) I get to stay home with my children and soak up every little moment with them I can before they grow up and leave the metaphorical nest. I have a partner who works hard so I can stay home. We’re all in good health, and I get to use my brain in ways that fuel me creatively, getting paid to do something I love. As someone who has known her calling since she was young, this is deeply satisfying.

6 Meaningful, Captivating Books to Gift This Holiday Season

6 Meaningful, Captivating Books to Gift This Holiday Season

You may have heard the rule about gifting: want/need/wear/read. It’s cute, and it rhymes so it’s easy to remember. But I say why not skip the first three and just gift a book? Or several? I’m steadfast in my belief that books make the best gift. They don’t dip in and out of fashion, they can be passed around or reread, and they can take you out of your world and into another. Books teach us lessons and help instill empathy within readers. They are, in short, the perfect gift.

I've Been Tracking My Habits for Three Years: This is What I've Learned

I've Been Tracking My Habits for Three Years: This is What I've Learned

In the fall of 2019, I was gifted a beautiful journal. Beyond the allure of a cloth-bound notebook and a fancy pen to use with it, I was sucked into the journal the way I get sucked into a good story: passionately, obsessively. It was a habit-tracking journal, and every single day since I opened the notebook up, nearly three years ago, I have tracked my habits.

3 Meaningful Ways to Practice Self-Care as an Introvert

3 Meaningful Ways to Practice Self-Care as an Introvert

Listen. There are a lot of introverts out there observing the world as it turns, quietly contributing as much as everyone else—just differently. It is an extrovert’s world, and trying to find our place within it can be exhausting to the point where a single work meeting can take it out of us introverts, let alone a day’s worth of meetings. Add to that the inherent need to spend time with family and friends, and an introvert can be pulped by the time they get home.

The Benefits of Anxiety and Why It Might Actually Be Your Superpower

The Benefits of Anxiety and Why It Might Actually Be Your Superpower

It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I signed up for it anyway: to read some of my writing in front of an audience. I was so anxious about it, so afraid that I might freeze while in front of everybody, that I might panic and cut my reading short so I could be anxious in solitude, that I practiced immensely. I read and reread my piece aloud to myself. I cut words I stumbled on. I shortened the superfluous. I practiced some more. And when it came time for me to get up in front of a big group of people to read my own writing—I didn’t trip up on a single word. Not for three minutes.

It took until I sat back down in my chair afterward, hands shaking, adrenaline still coursing through my veins, thick like syrup, that I realized I had done it without messing up at all.

4 Practical Suggestions to Help You Get Unstuck

4 Practical Suggestions to Help You Get Unstuck

We have all become mental Olympians these past two years, bending everything we once knew and trying to shape it into something that will work in the new landscape we’ve been thrust into. If our time making adjustments has taught us anything, it’s that stagnancy is the antithesis of success.

Those who didn’t pivot to accommodate the new state of affairs we’ve found ourselves in were left paddling furiously upstream (or worse), while those who were able to drop what they’d been doing and implement new ways of operating found themselves skimming along the surface with less effort, less fear, and less doubt. By no means was everyone able to adapt, no matter how willing they were. Sometimes it takes a lot more than the will to pivot in order to evolve to meet our environment’s new demands. Other times, though, we are able to unstick ourselves and find ways to keep paddling along.

Treat Your Mind Like Your Home: On Being Proactive About Your Mental Health

Treat Your Mind Like Your Home: On Being Proactive About Your Mental Health

We will do anything to make the physical spaces we live in beautiful. We will clean out the closets, get rid of clutter, and wash our windows. We will swap out the old with the new and refreshing. We will do all of this and not even give it another thought.

But our minds — the only spaces we truly cannot leave — often receive less love and care, less priority than our physical spaces. Our minds are hidden, the illnesses plaguing so many of them are invisible, and as such, our mental health is often not making it to our lists of priorities.

How to Support a Friend Who’s Going Through a Rough Patch

How to Support a Friend Who’s Going Through a Rough Patch

Let’s get really diplomatic about something quick: Life is weird. Some days are marvelous. Some days feel impossible, and those days can easily blur into weeks, sometimes months. When that happens, we need our community to be there for us to hold our hand and bring us back to the days we can marvel at. And when a dip like this happens to our friends, we need to be the ones reaching out our own hands.