christmas carol

• Scrooge: ''Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it''
• Scrooge: ''he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone...a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!''
• Scrooge: ''Hard and sharp as flint… secret, and self-contained...solitary as an oyster.''
• Scrooge: ''Scrooge's 'pointed nose, shrivelled cheek, his thin lips blue; grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him;''
• Narrator: ''fog came pouring in at every chink''
• Narrator: ''his clerk, in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank''
• Narrator: '"It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance…"'
• Bob Cratchit: ''Bob tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed''
• Narrator: ''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.''
• Scrooge: ''At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned''
• Narrator: '"Many thousands are in want of common necessities, hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts"'
• Scrooge: '"Are there no prisons?" said Scrooge..."And the union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"'
• Scrooge: ''I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry'.'
• Scrooge: '"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."'
• Narrator: 'The only time I know of...when men and women seem 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.'
• Narrator: ''while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour''
• Ghost of Jacob Marley: '"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."'
• Narrator: ''It was long...made of cashboxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds and heavy purses''
• Scrooge: ''There's more of gravy than of grave about you''
• Scrooge: ''Business!...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!''
• Ghost of Christmas Past: ''It was a strange figure-like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man...crown of head....a bright clear jet light...figure fluctuated...dissolving...distinct as ever.''
• Ghost of Christmas Past: ''He named and knew them everyone…he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them''
• Narrator: ''father is kinder now''
• Ghost of Christmas Past: ''The school is not quite deserted,' said the Ghost. 'A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.' Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.'
• Ghost of Christmas Present: ''He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil.'
• Ghost of Christmas Past: '"Another idol has displaced me. ..A golden one"'
• Ghost of Christmas Past: ''I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"'
• Ghost of Christmas Past: '"…and when he thought that such another creature…might have called him father…"'
• Scrooge: '"I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now."'
• Narrator: '"…but, though Scrooge pressed it down with force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it…"'
• Ghost of Christmas Present: ''Clothed in deep green robe...genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand...joyful air...antique scabbard; but no sword was in it...sheath eaten up with rust...food heaped up on the floor to form a throne''
• Ghost of Christmas Present: ''There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name;''
• Narrator: 'Bob had but fifteen 'bob' a week himself; he pocketed on Sundays but fifteen copies of his Christian name,'
• Narrator: 'Mrs Cratchit, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons"'
• Narrator: ''Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.''
• Tiny Tim: '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.'
• Narrator: ''There never was such a goose…"Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds…"'
• Narrator: 'Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;'
• Narrator: 'nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so.'
• Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: ''It may be that in the sight of Heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child'. 'To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!''