A Christmas Carol
1843
What if you could see your life as others see it, and see what you might become? Ebenezer Scrooge is a man who has made a religion of money. He works his clerk for starvation wages, turns away the poor with contempt, and has forgotten that he was ever young or poor himself. Christmas is "humbug" to him, a sentiment he wears like armor. Then one Christmas Eve, the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley appears in chains, doomed to wander the earth weighed down by the Register of Charitable Debt. Marley warns Scrooge that three spirits will visit him, each bearing the gift of vision. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows him what he's lost, his childhood, his love, his chance at a different life. The Ghost of Christmas Present reveals the poverty and suffering he ignores, and the small joys he might have brought to others. And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows him what comes next: a death unlamented, a grave unpityed, the world continuing without him. Dickens wrote this novella in six weeks after visiting a ragged school for London's street children. He wasn't interested in sentiment. He was interested in accountability.
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“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.””
— Charles Dickens
“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.””
— Charles Dickens
“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?""I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "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.””
— Charles Dickens
“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.””
— Charles Dickens
“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused””
— Charles Dickens
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.””
— Charles Dickens
“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!””
— Charles Dickens
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round”
— Charles Dickens
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!””
— Charles Dickens
