Quotes from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvey, and then with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in - down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, which the lid of that kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle, before she got it up again.
It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then: carrying its handle with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle as if it said, "I won't boil. Nothing shall induce me!”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“What right have you to be merry? what reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough. Come then, returned the nephew gaily. What right have you to be morose? You're rich enough.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don't dance while you are at it.
But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“How much longer can I be so fucking cute?”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken in most instances such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be fallible.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“... I have always thought of Christmas-time... 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.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“«Natale una fesseria, zio?», disse il nipote di Scrooge; «sono sicuro che non pensi una cosa simile».
«Certo che la penso», disse Scrooge. «Buon Natale! Che diritto hai tu di essere allegro? Che ragione hai tu di essere allegro? Sei povero abbastanza».
«Andiamo, via», rispose allegro il nipote. «Che diritto hai tu di essere triste? Che ragione hai tu di essere scontento? Sei ricco abbastanza».”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“«Ci sono molte cose, credo, che possono avermi fatto del bene senza che io ne abbia ricavato un profitto», replicò il nipote, «e Natale è una di queste. Ma sono sicuro che ho sempre considerato il periodo natalizio, quando è venuto — a prescindere dalla venerazione dovuta al suo nome e alla sua origine sacra, ammesso che qualcosa che si riferisca possa esser tenuta separata da questa venerazione — come buono; un periodo di gentilezza, di perdono, di carità, di gioia; l'unico periodo che io conosca, in tutto il lungo calendario di un anno, nel quale uomini e donne sembrano concordi nello schiudere liberamente i cuori serrati e nel pensare alla gente che è al disotto di loro come se si trattasse realmente di compagni nel viaggio verso la tomba, e non di un'altra razza di creature in viaggio verso altre mete. E per questo, zio, anche se il Natale non mi ha mai fatto entrare in tasca una moneta d'oro, e neanche d'argento, credo che mi abbia fatto bene e che mi farà bene, e chiedo che Dio lo benedica».”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!” Which all the family re-echoed. “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“... Within the mind, especially the mind under great stress... boundaries of space and time are meaningless, and the... interior self lives by other rules and in other dimensions.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“En nuestro fuero interno, medimos el tiempo por los cambios y los acontecimientos, no por los años.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“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, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“Take warning of the consequences of being nobody's enemy but your own.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“... 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!”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

About the author

Popular quotes

“But, every once in a while, even the most normal of people act in ways that surprise themselves, doing things they might never have imagined themselves doing because they're excited, or they're obsessed, or they're in love.”
― Miyuki Miyabe, quote from Brave Story

“Three hot chicks for three hot chicks."
"THEY'RE NOT CHICKS THEY"RE DUCKS!”
― Lauren Myracle, quote from Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks

“When you leave a job, one of the hardest decisions you have to make on cleaning out your desk is what to do with the coffinlike cardboard tray holding 958 fresh-smelling business cards. You can’t throw them out— they and the nameplate and a few sample payroll stubs are proof to yourself that you once showed up at that building every day and solved complicated, utterly absorbing problems there; unfortunately, the problems themselves, though they once obsessed you, and kept you working late night after night, and made you talk in your sleep, turn out to have been hollow: two weeks after your last day that already have contracted into inert pellets one-fiftieth of their former size; you find yourself unable to create the sense of what was really at stake, for it seems to have been the Hungarian 5/2 rhythm of the lived workweek alone that kept each fascinating crisis inflated to its full interdepartmental complexity. But coterminously, while the problems you were paid to solve collapse, the nod of the security guard, his sign-in book, the escalator ride, the things on your desk, the site of colleagues’ offices, their faces seen from characteristic angles, the features of the corporate bathroom, all miraculously expand: and in this way what was central and what was incidental end up exactly reversed.”
― Nicholson Baker, quote from The Mezzanine

“I snapped off a knobby twig from a shrub at my heel and pulled it back into a messy bun.”
― Penelope Fletcher, quote from Demon Girl

“There's something about outward appearances that has always been important to me. I always thought I was so ugly. I mean, I really did. I remember being in L.A. at my mom's house as a little kid and just staring into the mirror for hours. It was like, if I looked long enough, maybe I'd finally be handsome. It never worked. I just got uglier and uglier. Nothing about me ever seemed good enough. And there was this sadness inside me - this hopelessness. Focusing on my physical appearance was at least easier than trying to address the internal shit.”
― Nic Sheff, quote from Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.