# Quote — Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

> "If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "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. He should!"
>
> "Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
>
> "Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
>
> "Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
>
> "Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"
>
> "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!"

- Author: [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md)
- Book: [A Christmas Carol](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-christmas-carol.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol#Stave_1:_Marley's_Ghost) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-christmas-carol/if-i-could

## More from this book

> "They are Man’s," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. 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!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-christmas-carol/they-are-mans.md)

> It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-christmas-carol/it-was-a-turkey.md)

> The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
>
> "I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
>
> He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
>
> "They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all. They are here — I am here — the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!"
>
> His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.
>
> "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 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!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-christmas-carol/the-bed-was.md)