Quotes (A Christmas Carol)

Key quotes from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens for GCSE English Literature revision. This section provides key quotes from the novella A Christmas Carol.

Stave one 

About Scrooge: “As solitary as an oyster.”

“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge.” 

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” 

“Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” 

Marley’s Ghost: “Mankind was my business.” 

Marley’s Ghost: “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.”   

Stave Two       

“There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something: that’s all.” 

About the Fezziwig family: “…shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.”

Scrooge about Mr Fezziwig: “The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it costs a fortune.” 

Belle to Scrooge: “Another idol has displaced me.”  

Belle about Scrooge: “I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you.” 

Belle’s husband to Belle about Scrooge: “Quite alone in the world, I do believe.”  

Stave Three

“There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad.” 

About the Ghost of Christmas Present: “Sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch.” 

About the Cratchit’s goose: “a feathered phenomenon.”

“There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked.” 

About Tiny Tim: “If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”

Bob Cratchit: “I’ll give you Mr Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast.”

About Ignorance and Want: “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy.”  

Stave Four

Scrooge says to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: “I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart.” 

Two Business Colleagues: “It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it.”   

Scrooge to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now.” 

Bob Cratchit about Tiny Tim’s grave: “I wish you could have gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is.” 

Bob Cratchit about Fred’s kindness: “It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt with us.” 

About Scrooge’s grave: “overrun by grass and weeds.”

Scrooge on what he has learnt: “I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”   

Stave Five

Scrooge: “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.” 

Scrooge: “I am as light as a feather, I am a happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man.”

“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 knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the Knowledge.”