For the Love of Sentences

Frank Bruni is a New York Times columnist whose career with the prestigious newspaper has spanned twenty-five years. At the end of his column today, February 23, 2026, he added an entertaining section titled For the Love of Sentences. In it, he provides a collection of comments, sentences made by writers about this year’s Olympic events and competitors. I am providing a few of them here for your entertainment.

  1. The Athletic, Matt Slater explainedthat every curling stone used in the Winter Olympics for the past two decades has been quarried in the uninhabited Scottish island of Ailsa Craig: “To quote the Scottish Geology Trust, Ailsa Craig’s microgranite has ‘no crustal contamination’ and, as an added bonus, it contains the ‘comparatively rare alkaline ferromagnesian minerals riebeckitic arfvedsonite, hedenbergite-acmite and aenigmatite.’ If you take nothing else from this piece, store those away for your next game of Scrabble.” (Thanks to Judy Howard of Seattle for nominating this.)
  2. In The Washington Post, Barry Svrluga providedcontext for Mikaela Shiffrin’s gold medal performance in the slalom: “Five of Shiffrin’s World Cup victories this season have been by more than 1.2 seconds. In ski racing that’s enough time for dinosaurs to die off and be replaced by mammals.” (John Holtz, Medford Lakes, N.J.)
  3. In The Wall Street Journal, Georgi Kantchev and Laine Higgins profiledthe Norwegian cross-country skier Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, whose dominance in the sport is attributed to his way of sprinting, known as the Klaebo stride: “While the technique is now taught in ski schools across Scandinavia, few can replicate it without calling an ambulance.” They added: “Cross-country skiers talk about expending energy in terms of burning matches. The Klaebo stride is more like lighting the whole box at once.” (Bill Hamill, Richmond, Va.)
  4. Also in The Journal, Jason Gay reflectedon the shockingly disappointing performance of the American figure skater Ilia Malinin (a.k.a. the “Quad God”). “When it unravels like that, the whole spectacle starts to feel pretty cruel,” he wrote. “The anticipation and exuberance that bounced around in the arena moments ago gets sucked out of the concrete and cold dread rushes in. The crowd goes numb, near silent. You can almost hear the blades on the ice, glumly slashing through the final motions of a night expected to end so differently.” (Ellen Langille, Mount Dora, Fla.)

This feature to Bruni’s ‘Opinion’ piece caught my attention because I had just finished a short book by the much-acclaimed biographer and the Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values at Tulane University, Walter Isaacson. Written in honor of our country’s 250th anniversary, Isaacson titled his book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (Simon and Shuster, November 2025).  That sentence is the second one in the Declaration of Independence, composed by Thomas Jefferson and edited by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Most of us know it by heart.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

Truly, it may very well be the greatest sentence ever written, especially at a time when its aspirational and self-evident truths are being threatened by the autocratic, bigoted and unconstitutional behavior of the Trump administration and its allies. We can only make our nation great by recommitting ourselves to its lofty ideals and our ageless pursuit of a more perfect union.

I was thinking today, however, that there are other great sentences that are eminently worthy of note. As we begin this sacred season of Lent, a time of deep reflection and reassessment, marked by a process leading to repentance and renewal, I am feeling a love for sentences endowed by our Creator with the power of truth that might elevate them as candidates for ‘the greatest sentence ever written.’ We certainly have a few preeminent possibilities in scripture. In his New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional, David Paul Tripp expresses this universal hope:

You’re going to hunger for some success in life. May you hunger for the complete success of the gospel in your heart.

Like Isaacson’s greatest sentence ever written, the truth of which needs to grow anew in the heart of America, so too must the great Gospel sentences achieve complete success in our hearts and even the heart of our nation.

The greatest story ever told certainly contains some great lines!

  1. Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish council, visited Jesus under the cover of night, seeking insight into the meaning of Jesus’ life and teachings. His focus was on the ‘born again’ requirement for faith but Jesus blows his mind when He shares the greatest truth in Scripture:

 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16, NRSVUE)

  1. No evening in Jesus’ life was more poignant than what we call, Maundy Thursday, the night on which Jesus gathered his disciples in an upper room, not only to celebrate the Passover but to do so by washing their feet. It was on this night that Jesus uttered these words:

34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 34-35, NRSVUE)

  1. Great sentences from scripture were not only stated by Jesus but those who came to believe in Him, who followed him and then who spread the Good News about Him. Greatest among these was the apostle Paul, and the greatest testimonial from him was written to the Romans:

37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8: 37-39, (NRSVUE)

  1. Finally, but not exhaustively, is a simple three-word Easter proclamation:

HE IS RISEN!

Is there a greater, more important sentence ever spoken than the one proclaiming the truth and joy of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and in Him, our resurrection? With all due respect to the revered second sentence in the Declaration of Independence, I think not.