35 Quotes From 'A Christmas Carol' That Will Cheer up Even the Biggest Scrooges
Bah Humbug!
One of the most beloved holiday tales of all time is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The timeless tale of finding the spirit of Christmas and the joy of giving couldn't be more relevant in a time of increased isolation and poverty. Reminisce about the most important messages and themes from the story with our collection of the best A Christmas Carol quotes. They're guaranteed to warm the heart of even the biggest Scrooge in your life.
A Christmas Carol Quotes
1. “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
2. "I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it." — Jacob Marley
3. "No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused." — Jacob Marley
4. "For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself."
5. "But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as 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!" — Ebenezer Scrooge's Nephew
6. "Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail."
7. “God bless us every one!” — Tiny Tim
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8. "A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" — Ebenezer Scrooge
9. "Bah humbug." — Ebenezer Scrooge
10. "He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days, and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, not wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him."
11. "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change." — Ebenezer Scrooge
12. "Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. 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." — Bob Cratchit
13. "The spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an axe laden with wood. 'Why, it’s Ali Baba!' Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. 'It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know. One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, just like that. Poor boy!'"
14. "It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death." — Jacob Marley
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15. "'You fear the world too much. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?'" — Belle
16. "Come in, come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!" — The Ghost of Christmas Present
17. "Man, if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?" — The Ghost of Christmas Present
18. "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." — Ebenezer Scrooge
19. "I am sorry for [Scrooge]. I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself always." — Ebenezer Scrooge's Nephew
20. "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" — Ebenezer Scrooge
21. "He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again."
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22. "What! Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?" — The Ghost of Christmas Past
23. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there." — Ebenezer Scrooge
24. "Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!"
25. "For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of his life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall." — Ebenezer Scrooge
26. "If I could work my will, 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. He should!" — Ebenezer Scrooge
27. "They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be."
28. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough." — Ebenezer Scrooge's Nephew
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29. "I don't know what to do! I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!'" — Ebenezer Scrooge
30. "He’s a comical old fellow, that’s the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offenses carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him. His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!—that he is ever going to benefit Us with it.” — Ebenezer Scrooge's Nephew
31. "I don’t know what day of the month it is. I don’t know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby." — Ebenezer Scrooge
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32. "Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!"
33. "Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter at the outset."
34. "I will honor 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." — Ebenezer Scrooge
35. "And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!"
Next, check out the 100 best Christmas quotes to get your fill of holiday cheer.