"Now she felt a trifle lightheaded because life had been given back to her and for a little while her eyes were clear enough to see how good it was and how deeply she loved it. She breathed in the salt air, she felt the sun hot on her bare head, the breeze fresh in her face, she heard the waves breaking slowly and foaming over the sand, she looked up the long stretch of golden beach between the sea and the dark, palmetto-fringed jungle of myrtle and cassena, and her soul felt stretched because she was really knowing these things for the first time.

"She loved just being alive - even when she was terrified, even in pain, even - yes, even in sorrow, though she had never realized it until now. [...] As if life, as if living were not to be reckoned by joy or sorrow, but by the completeness with which you gave yourself to it."

-Elizabeth Janet Gray, Beppy Marlowe of Charles Town

I love this whole quote. It's so true. It's so important to truly love being alive, not just the fun things about our lives but the actual, deep, fundamental meaning of being here on Earth.

@Artemis, if you see this - yes, definitely read Beppy Marlowe of Charles Town! It's really fun and inspiring, and superbly written.

Here's another quote:

"Then Flora MacDonald spoke. She scarcely seemed to raise her voice, but every syllable carried, vibrant and ringing, to the corners of the room. The Gaelic words went home to the hearts of her audience. Meggy watched the faces about her, the faces of gnarled Highlanders, veterans of another and disastrous war, of weather-beaten farmers in the kilts of their fathers, of awkward lads, and the fine, strong, work-weary faces of the women. They all listened intently. Sometimes a gleam would come in the eyes, as if some chord had been touched. Meggy felt the heightening of emotion throughout the entire company, felt the tide of enthusiasm rising." -Elizabeth Janet Gray (yep, the one who wrote Beppy Marlowe), Meggy MacIntosh

"Anyway," said Richard, in the untroubledtone of voice of one whose hangover has left him and who knew that, somewhere far above them, someone was having a beautiful day, "that was okay. Nice food. And no one was trying to kill us."

"I'm sure that will remedy itself as the day goes on," said Hunter, accurately.

-- Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere 

"You are going to live a life full of great and terrible moments you cannot even imagine yet!" 

-- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

"You have heard the voices of the stars, Momo. You needn't be afraid;"

-- Michael Ende, Momo7

Quoting from Momo, I see... Excellent idea. I shall do the same. (By the way, @Artemis (if you see this), who was the translator for the version of it that you read? My version was translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn and I was wondering if yours was as well.)

"Children played in the middle of the street, getting in the way of cars whose drivers not only watched and waited, smiling broadly, but sometimes got out and joined in their games. People stood around chatting with the friendliness of those who take a genuine interest in their neighbors' welfare. Other people, on their way to work, had time to stop and admire the flowers in a window-box or feed the birds. Doctors, too, had time to devote themselves properly to their patients, and workers of all kinds did their jobs with pride and loving care, now that they were no longer expected to turn out as much work as possible in the shortest possible time."  This is my idea of a perfect world - one where people have time, instead of rushing from home to work and back again without enjoying life.

This is said by Professor Hora, a mysterious figure who's in charge of time everywhere:

"Just as people have eyes to see light with and eyes to hear sounds with, so they have hearts for the appreciation of time. And all the time they fail to appreciate is as wasted on them as the colors of the rainbow are wasted on a blind person or the nightingale's song on a deaf one. Some hearts are unappreciative of time, I fear, though they beat like all the rest."

This is what the villains of the story, the men in gray, make everyone believe:

"Children are the raw material of the future. A world dependent on computers and nuclear energy will need an army of experts and technicians to run it. Far from preparing our children for tomorrow's world, we still allow far too many of them to squander years of their precious time on childish tomfoolery. It's a blot on our civilization and a crime against future generations." That is soooo similar to what you hear all the time nowadays, and I'm always like, 'helLO! these are cHiLdReN we're talking about!!" I love how Michael Ende presents it as the mistaken belief it is.

And lastly, a lovely piece of writiing:

"Everything was bathed in a sort of golden twilight... As the glittering pendulum slowly neared the surface of the lake, an enormous waterlily bud emerged from its dark depths. The closer the pendulum came, the wider it opened, until at last it lay full-blown on the surface.

"Momo had never seen so exquisite a flower. It was composed of all the colors in the spectrum - brilliant colors such as Momo had never dreamed of. While the pendulum hovered above it, she became so absorbed in the spectacle that she forgot everything else. The scent alone seemed something she had always craved without knowing what it was."

@Poinsettia: I read Lucas Zwirner's translation~~

"'Come, Miss Jane, don't cry,' said Bessie as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire, 'don't burn!' but how could she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey?"

--Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"The mind is a strange country."

--Brita Sandstrom, Hollow Chest 

"No. No, I guess he wouldn't. But somehow I wonder. It's the same as the lame man. It's not much of a world, is it? Is it worth trying to bring Leah back into it?"

Thacia stood still in the road. "Yes!" she cried, and Daniel was astounded to see that tears had sprung into her eyes. "Oh Daniel - yes! If only I could make you see, somehow, that it is!"

"All this - " she exclaimed, the sweep of her arm including the deepening blue of the sky, the shining lake in the distance, the snow-covered mountain far to the north. "So much! You must look at it all, Daniel, not just at the unhappy things." Suddenly she reached out and touched his hand. "Look!" she whispered.

He lifted his head and followed her gaze. Overhead, barely discernible against the blue of the sky, a long gray shadow hung suspended. Cranes, hundreds of them, were passing in a great phalanx. They wheeled and caught the sun, flashing light from banks of white feathers, with a shimmering like the snow on the mountain. Motionless, the two watched till the line slowly melted into the distant air.

Thacia let out her breath. "How beautiful!" She sighed. "It is beautiful just to be alive in Galilee!"

This is from The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth George Speare... I especially love the imagery and description in this excerpt, and the message :)

My absolute favorite first sentence of a book: "Dear You, The body you are wearing used to be mine" — The Rook by Daniel O'Malley.

such a good hookkkkk 

"You're to cute to be real *kisses*"

Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag 

"Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?"

--Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

not quite a book quote, but oh well~

"We do not write to be understood. We write in order to understand." -C. S. Lewis

"I love the laughter of this night.

"Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever.  I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.

"For now, just let us run."

--Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger