Great Quotes I Read in 2024

a baker's dozen ... or so

“Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.” – C. S. Lewis

I recently read the above quote while having in my mind various end-of-year collections I’ve come across on the interwebs—best books read, best movies watched, best recipes cooked, etc.

Honestly, I haven’t yet taken the time to gather up any “best of” 2024. (Perhaps I need to keep better track of such things in 2025.) But I have jotted down some quotes from books that spoke to me or stood out as I was reading them.

And so, while I might never “fully realize the enormous extension” of my being that I owe to good authors and writers, here are some quotes that have assisted in the shaping and forming this year.

There are many other good and true and beautiful things I’ve read this year, but simply didn’t have the presence of mind to copy them down. Hopefully, I’ll keep better track of such things in the year ahead.

While I haven’t categorized these quotes, I found that many of them centered on themes that tend to crop up in my writing: belonging, beauty, identity, hope.

Some of these quotes are fairly long, others only a sentence. All are from books I read or am “currently reading” this year.

“The greatest trap in life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection, doubting who we really are. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but they're seductive quality comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions.”
Henri Nouwen, in Spiritual Direction

---

“I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me.”
Wendell Berry, from “Woods” in the poetry collection A Part

---

“Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

---