"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?"
Marley says to Scrooge, "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. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge says, "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy ... A merry Christmas to everybody!"
Scrooge was "self-contained and solitary as an oyster".
Scrooge says, "I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!"
"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death, "said Scrooge quite agonised, "show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!
...
"The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was
Scrooge says to his nephew, "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."
"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!"
Scrooge says, "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year".
"During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self."
"Scrooge was the Ogre of the family."
"There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were themes of universal admiration."
"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it."
"Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal."
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?"
"No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!"
Scrooge says, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me".
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man."
"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost.
Speaking about poor people:
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it and decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge says to the Ghost, "I fear you more that any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company and do it with a thankful heart."
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain
"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something: that's all."
"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
"Leave me!
"Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more.
