“I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything.”

“What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!”

“Annual income: twenty pounds; annual expenditure: nineteen pounds six shillings — result: happiness. Annual income: twenty pounds; annual expenditure: twenty pounds and sixpence — result: misery.”

“I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.”

“I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people who are not easy in their graves keep the day they died upon.”

“"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."”

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.”

“The wine-shops breed, in a physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution.”

“Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.”

“A multitude of people and yet solitude.”

“At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.”

“Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.”

“Death is nature's remedy for all things.”

“She writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived.”

“One should never be ashamed to cry. Tears are rain on the dust of the earth.”

“I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable—indescribable; my misery amazing.”

“When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief in himself.”

“I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it. I love her against reason — but who would as soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner.”

“Friendship? Yes, please.”

“For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now, a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years, but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.”

“All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.”

“Least said, soonest mended.”

“Family should not only consist of those we share blood with, but also those we would give blood for.”

“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.”

“Think, now and then, that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat staring at mid-air, and Mrs. Wilfer sat silently giving them to understand that every breath she drew required to be drawn with a self-denial rarely paralleled in history.”

“To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.”

“I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.”

“Then I'm sorry to say, I've eaten your pie.”

“I do not know the American gentleman—God forgive me for putting two such words together.”

“It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.”

“There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.”

“If the parks be 'the lungs of London,' we wonder what Greenwich Fair is — a periodical breaking out, we suppose — a sort of spring rash.”

“Fear is not there to stop you; it's there to show you that you're interested and you care.”

“"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be only?" The Ghost pointed to the grave. "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"”

“In the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article.”

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”

“The meagre lighthouse, all in white and haunting the seaboard as if it were the ghost of an edifice that once had colour and rotundity, dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves.”

“Credit is a system whereby a person who cannot pay gets another person who cannot pay to guarantee that he can pay.”

“It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off.”

“The aphorism "Whatever is, is right," would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence that nothing that ever was, was wrong.”

“Everybody said so. Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right.”

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

“Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.”

“The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people's one.”

“The law is an ass, an idiot.”

“It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.”

“Never close your lips to those you have already opened your heart to.”

“Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”

“Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.”