Words of Inspiration: Quotes from ‘A Christmas Carol’

“A Christmas Carol,’’ written by Charles Dickens in 1843, has become synonymous with the holiday season, and with good reason. This heartwarming story of repentance, redemption, and the transformative power of love and charity is especially poignant during the season of goodwill to all.

Here are a few memorable quotes from the tale, in the hope of inspiring you to become reacquainted with it this year.

Scrooge: “Bah, humbug!”

Narrator: “Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!”

Scrooge: “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!”

Scrooge’s nephew: “I am sorry for [Scrooge]. I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself always.’’

Narrator: “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”

Scrooge to the Ghost of Jacob Marley: “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!”

Marley’s ghost to Scrooge: ‘’No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.’’

Ghost of Christmas Past: “What! Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?”

Scrooge: “Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”

Scrooge: “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.’’

Scrooge: ‘’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!”

Narrator, of Scrooge: “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!’’

Tiny Tim: God bless Us, Every One!

‘Christmas Carol’ comes to Sleepy Hollow
Following up on performances of Irving’s ‘Legend’ in October, master storyteller Jonathan Kruk presents his adaptation of Dickens’s tale in December at historic the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow. Don’t miss this Historic Hudson Valley event!