Sometimes a magazine offers so much to inspire, that you can continue reading it months after you first bought it. That's the way it's been for me with the August issue of Real Simple. It's October and I'm still inspired by author Anne Roiphe's brief but moving piece about a compliment her husband paid her 10 days before his death. His four small words provided a "beauty potion" she will carry with her as long as she lives. You can read the article here to learn what the compliment was.  It's Roiphe's discussion of inner beauty that moved me:

"I don’t believe that inner beauty is sufficient in this cruel world. That’s the pap one tells a child. I don’t believe that positive thinking improves your skin tone or that loving or being loved changes the shape of your nose or restores the thickness and color of hair, but I do know that there is a way of being beautiful, even as age takes its toll, that has something to do with the spirit filling with joy, something to do with the union with another human being, with the sense of having done well at something enormously important..."

Read more of Roiphe's words at www.realsimple.com.