A Christmas Carol Key Quotes

Scrooge

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley.

But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you?

‘Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.’

What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?

‘Every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.'

I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.

‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed.

‘Remember it.’ cried Scrooge with fervour; ‘I could walk it blindfolded.’

‘Why, it’s Ali Baba.’ Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. ‘It’s dear old honest Ali Baba’.

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city, indeed.

Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, ‘Poor boy.’ and cried again.

During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation.

Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life.’

‘I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.

Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows said,’ Good morning, sir. A merry Christmas to you.’

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure.

Marley

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’

‘In life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!’

‘No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.’

‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’

‘At this time of the rolling year,’ the spectre said ‘I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!

‘No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.’

Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!’

Without their visits,’ said the Ghost, ‘you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.

Fred

‘A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!’ cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

His face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled…

‘Come, then,’ returned the nephew gaily. ‘What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.’

[Christmas is]…’a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys’. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!’.

‘Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.’

‘I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?’

‘Because I fell in love.’

‘I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute.

I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last.

His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding.

‘He’s a comical old fellow,’ said Scrooge’s nephew,’ that’s the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.’

‘He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,’ said

Fred,’ and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge.‘‘

Bob

The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.

in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder.

‘Mr Scrooge.’ said Bob; ‘I’ll give you Mr Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast.’

Tiny Tim

Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.

‘God bless us every one.’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.’

He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and

blind men see.’