Anne Frank: 10 beautiful quotes from The Diary of a Young Girl

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2015 is “keep the memory alive”, and today we want to remember Annelies Marie Frank, better known as Anne Frank, who started her diary Diary of a Young Girl at the age of just 13, while hiding from the German occupation of Amsterdam during the second world war. Anne wrote her diary in hiding in a secret annex of an old warehouse for the next two years. The diary stops abruptly in August 1944, when her family are betrayed and eventually sent to Auschwitz death camp. Only Anne’s father Otto survived and published his daughter’s Anne’s diary in 1947.

Even if you haven’t read the diary, you will probably have heard of Anne Frank, seen one of the many film adaptations of Diary of a Young Girl, or even visited the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam.

But we still think that the best way to experience Diary of a Young Girl is to read it yourself. This funny, heartbreaking, inspiring book will make it so easy for you to keep the memory of Anne Frank alive.

To give you a little taste, we have collected 10 of the greatest quotes from Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl that are bound to make you want sit down right away and (finally) read this wonderful diary from cover to cover, if you haven’t already.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.

We aren’t allowed to have any opinions. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn’t stop you having your own opinion. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn’t be prevented from saying what they think.

Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!

It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

Please share your favourite Anne Frank quotes by emailing childrens.books@theguardian.com or on Twitter @GdnChildrensBks and we’ll add them to this best quote blog to honour the memory of the most important teenage diary of all.

Michaela, on email

“Because paper has more patience than people.”

Habtamu, on email

“As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”

Verity, on email

“I had an occasional flash of understanding, but then got selfishly wrapped up again in my own problems and pleasures.”

Kressel, on email

“Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up until now? It is God who has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. Who knows? It might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and only that reason do we suffer. We can never become just Netherlanders, or just English or representatives of any country for that matter. We will always remain Jews, but we want to, too.” – April 11, 1944

Nitish, on email

“When you are on your bed at night just analyse all the happenings you have been go through whole day and learn from your mistakes, you will be a better person then.”

Marianna, on email

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”