In this blog post, I’ve compiled 50 of the best A Christmas Carol quotes with page numbers and who said them.
These are perfect for adding holiday cheer to your writing or entering the Christmas spirit!
Quotes from A Christmas Carol with page numbers, chapters, and who said them.
A Christmas Carol Quotes With Page Numbers Stave I
“Marley was dead: to begin with.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 3
“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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 3
“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, 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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 4
“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no 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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 4
“Bah,” said Scrooge, “Humbug.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 5
“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—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!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Fred, Stave I, Page 6
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Fred, Stave I, Page 6
“And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that [Christmas] has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Fred, Stave I, Page 6
“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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 6
“If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 9
“it’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 9
“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 11
“He lived in chambers that had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 11
“Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 13
“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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 15
“It is required of every man,” the ghost returned, “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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley (the ghost), Stave I, Page 16
“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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge and Jacob Marley (the ghost), Stave I, Page 17
“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley (Ghost), Stave I, Page 17
“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 18
“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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge and Jacob Marley (the ghost), Stave I, Page 18
“Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
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. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 20
A Christmas Carol Stave II Quotes
“He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave II, Page 25
“He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave II, Page 31
“You fear the world too much,’ she answered gently. ‘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?”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Belle, Stave II, Page 32
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is noth-ing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes tocondemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Past, Stave II, Page 32
“and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave II, Page 34
“In short, I should have liked to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet be man enough to know its value”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave II, Page 34
A Christmas Carol Stave III Quotes
“At last, however, he began to think — as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too . . .”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave III, Page 38
“it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave III, Page 38
“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!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave III, Page 39
“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; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave III, Page 43
“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. 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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Mrs. Cratchit and Bob Cratchit, Stave III, Page 44
“God bless us, every one!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim, Stave III, Page 47
“Man,” said the Ghost, “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?”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave III, Page 47
“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
“Man,” said the Ghost, “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? 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. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave III, Page 47
“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave III, Page 51
“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, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave III, Page 51
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave III, Page 53
“They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave III, Page 53
“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!” “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge. “Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave III, Page 57
A Christmas Carol Stave IV Quotes
“Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave IV, Page 65
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave IV, Page 71
“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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave IV, Page 72
A Christmas Carol Stave V Quotes
“Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave V, Page 74
“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “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!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave V, Page 74
“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave V, Page 74
. “He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed of any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness. (p. 119)”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave V, Page 77
“His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave V, Page 79
“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 in the outset”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave V, Page 79
“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!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave V, Page 79
Quotes From A Christmas Carol and Analysis
1. “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, (The Narrator), Stave III, Page 51
This quote from A Christmas Carol emphasizes the power of humor and laughter to spread joy and bring people together. It suggests that positive emotions can be more contagious than sadness and sorrow, thus providing a powerful message of hope and resilience.
2. “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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge and Jacob Marley, Stave I, Page 17
This quote from the book A Christmas Carol illustrates the consequences of our own actions. The Ghost of Jacob Marley tells Scrooge that the suffering and chains he is now experiencing in death result from his life choices.
The message is that although we can’t undo our past mistakes, we can learn from them and strive to make better choices.
3. “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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave IV, Page 72
The quote reflects Scrooge’s commitment to changing his life and honoring the spirit of Christmas all year round. He acknowledges the importance of reflecting on the past, living in the present, and looking towards the future and that all three spirits will work within him to help him stay true to this promise.
Scrooge is determined to make a lasting change in his life by not shutting out the lessons they have to teach.
4. “No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 18
This quote from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens emphasizes the importance of seizing opportunities and not taking life’s blessings for granted. It serves as a warning that once an opportunity is missed, there is no going back and making amends.
5. “For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave III, Page 53
This quote from A Christmas Carol demonstrates the importance of celebrating Christmas as a time of joy and innocence while emphasizing the importance of being a child and remembering the simple pleasures in life. It also serves as a reminder of the true meaning of Christmas and the example of humility set by Jesus Christ when He was a child.
6. “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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 15
This quote illustrates Scrooge’s reaction to Marley’s Ghost. He is surprised and skeptical about the ghost’s authenticity. It also conveys Scrooge’s disbelief that spirits from the afterlife could exist and that anything supernatural could happen.
The imagery of the food items suggests that Scrooge believes the ghost could not be real, as he likens Marley to something that is not alive and could be digested.
7. “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—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!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Fred, Stave I, Page 6
Fred’s quote from A Christmas Carol reveals a profound understanding of the importance of the Christmas spirit. He believes it is more valuable than any financial profit and a time to open one’s heart to others, regardless of social class or wealth.
His sentiment of generosity and kindness highlights the season’s moral and social significance and its ability to bring people together.
8. “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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge and Jacob Marley, Stage I, Page 18
This quote from A Christmas Carol emphasizes that Marley’s choices in life have left him regretful in death, emphasizing that he should have focused on things like charity and benevolence rather than business.
The repetition of “business” highlights the contrast between Marley’s former materialistic focus and the more unselfish pursuits he now realizes he should have pursued.
9. “They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Present, Stave III, Page 53
This quote from A Christmas Carol is a warning to beware of Ignorance and Want and all the danger they bring. The Ghost of Christmas Present’s message is that Ignorance is the most dangerous of the two because it carries with it the potential for destruction unless its writing is erased by understanding and knowledge.
10. “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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave I, Page 3
This quote from A Christmas Carol establishes Marley’s death as an inarguable fact and creates a humorous effect by poking fun at the cliche assertion of his death being “as dead as a doornail.”
The narrator goes to elaborate lengths to explain why this simile is true and emphasizes the certainty of Marley’s death to prepare the reader for future extraordinary events.
What’s the famous last line of A Christmas Carol?
“May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave V, Page 79
What is an important quote from Stave One Christmas Carol?
“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave I, Page 18
What are 2 quotes from Scrooge?
“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, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 15
“Bah,” said Scrooge, “Humbug.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave I, Page 5
What are some quotes in A Christmas Carol about society?
“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The narrator, Stave III, Page 51
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Stave IV, Page 71
“It is required of every man,” the ghost returned, “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.”
~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley, Stave I, Page 16
Sources:
goodreads.com/work/quotes/-a-christmas-carol