35 Best Ebenezer Scrooge Quotes From 'A Christmas Carol'

Why Ebenezer Scrooge Quotes

Various Charles Dickens quotes from ‘A Christmas Carol’ provide us a sneak peek into an empathetic, warming, and a mesmerizing journey that this classic is. 'A Christmas Carol's message of love, redemption and the period’s generosity has reverberated with a great many generations, regardless of whether read, heard, or watched.

The immortal story of finding the spirit of Christmas and the delight of giving couldn’t be more critical in the times of turbulent coiling emotions, expanded seclusion, stress, and dilemmas.

What Parents Need To Know

• Our protagonist is a rich but bitter man. Ebenezer Scrooge, a banker, is a man whose fate results from his life deeds.
• Scrooge has a realization with the help of the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present, and the ghost of Christmas future. The ghosts give Scrooge demonstrations of how grace can stretch out a long way. The ghost of Christmas presents shows Scrooge how damaging his greed can be. In contrast, the ghost of Christmas future makes Scrooge realize the consequences of his life if he doesn’t alter his way of life.
• He eventually reconciles with his nephew and forges a new relationship with Tiny Tim.

What To Discuss With Kids

• Ebenezer Scrooge's journey will help you awaken the spirit of Christmas within your heart. The essence of the story is that you should not lose your belief in doing good for other.
• With many successful movie, play, musicals and even TV Show adaptations, this story is wildly commercialized. Yet, at its heart it is a simple tale of finding one's faith.
• The ghosts in the novel may be portrayed as a supernatural element, but they also represent an inner voice, introspection and the protagonists' own moral compass. While discussing the ghosts with children, it can be a symbolical reference rather than a nod to the existence of supernatural forces.
• The lessons learned by Scrooge enlighten us to prioritize the right things, such as love, forgiveness, hope and faith.

Best Quotes From 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens

Remember the main messages and themes from the classic story ‘A Christmas Carol’ with our supply of the best quotes from Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge believes that the poor do not deserve help, so he is presented as a miserable, grumpy man.

Here are some of the best ‘A Christmas Carol’ Scrooge quotes for this holiday season that will melt your heart.

1. “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.

The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” - Ebenezer Scrooge

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

3. “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses are departed from, the ends will change.” - Ebenezer Scrooge

4. “God bless us, every one!”

5. “Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honored head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious.” - ‘A Christmas Carol’.

6. “Spirit, tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”- Ebenezer Scrooge

7. “Bah, It’s humbug still! I won’t believe it.” - Ebenezer Scrooge

8. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!” - Ebenezer Scrooge

9. “It’s not my busines.” - Ebenezer Scrooge

10. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.” - Ebenezer Scrooge

11. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly.” - Ebenezer Scrooge

12. “I don’t know what to do! cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath, and making a perfect Laocoon 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!” - Ebenezer Scrooge

13. “Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course, he did. How could it be otherwise?

Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner.

And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.”

14. “Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!"

15. “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”

Quotes From Famous ‘A Christmas Carol’ Adaptations

16. “I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.” - Ebenezer Scrooge, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

17.

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, 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!”- Fred, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

18. “Let me hear one word out of you, Cratchit, and you can keep Christmas by losing your position!” - Ebenezer Scrooge, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

19. “In an altered spirit. In another atmosphere of life. In everything that made my love of any worth in your sight. Tell me, Ebenezer, if this contract had never been between us, would you seek me out now? No.” - Belle, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

20. “There is nothing on this earth more terrifying to me than a life doomed to poverty. May I ask, why do you condemn, with such severity, the honest pursuit of substance?” - Ebenezer Scrooge as a middle-aged man, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

21. “Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?” - Ebenezer Scrooge, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

22. “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December! But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.” - Ebenezer Scrooge, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

23. “It isn’t that, Spirit.

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.” - Ebenezer Scrooge, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

24. “Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s misused opportunities!” - ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

25. “What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? - Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

26. “That's the one good thing about regret: it's never too late. You can always change tomorrow if you want to.” - Claire Phillips, ‘Scrooged’ 1988.

27. “I am the youngest president in the history of television for a reason: I know the people.” - Frank Cross, ‘Scrooged’ 1988.

28. “I've made a few mistakes. I gotta live with that. But I do know who I am, I know what I want, and I know what's going on!” - Frank Cross, ‘Scrooged’ 1988.

29. “Close your eyes...! And think of snowflakes and moonbeams and whiskers on kittens...” - Ghost of Christmas present, ‘Scrooged’ 1988.

30. “You fear the world too much…. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall of one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you.” - Belle, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

31.“Look, it don't matter a hill of beans what happens to me but the world couldn't afford it if anything happened to you. Now stay put.” - ‘Lee Major, ‘Scrooged' 1988.

32. “If you believe in this spirit thing, the miracle will happen and then you'll want it to happen again tomorrow. You won't be one of these bastards who says "Christmas is once a year and it's a fraud", it's NOT!

It can happen every day, you've just got to want that feeling. And if you like it and you want it, you'll get greedy for it! You'll want it every day of your life and it can happen to you!” - Frank Cross, ‘Scrooged' 1988.

33. “It's Christmas Eve! It's... it's the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we... we cheer a little more.

For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be. It's a... miracle. It's really a sort of a miracle.” - Frank Cross, ‘Scrooged' 1988.

34. “You have to do something. You have to take a chance. You do have to get involved. There are people that are having... having trouble making their miracle happen.” - Frank Cross, ‘Scrooged' 1988.

35. “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are.”- Ebenezer Scrooge, ‘A Christmas Carol’ 2009.

36. As for you, nephew, if you were in my will, I'd disinherit you!" - Ebenezer Scrooge, 'Scrooge' 1970.

37. "Go, and redeem some other promising young creature, but leave me to keep Christmas in my own way." - Ebenezer Scrooge, 'Scrooge' 1970.

38. "Well, my friend, I'm not going to beat around the bush. I'm simply not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. Which leaves me no choice, but to raise your salary." - Ebenezer Scrooge, 'Scrooge' 1970.

39. "Fifteen shillings a week, a wife and five children...and he still talks of a Merry Christmas!" - Ebenezer Scrooge, 'Scrooge' 1970.

40. "How shall I ever understand this world? There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty, and yet, there is nothing it condemns with such severity as the pursuit of wealth." - Ebenezer Scrooge, 'Scrooge' 1970.

41. "In short, gentlemen, if you want to save the fair name of the company by accepting their generous offer, they become the company!"​ - Mr Jorkin, 'Scrooge' 1970.

42. "See the phantoms filling the sky around you. They astound you, I can tell, these inhabitants of hell. Poor wretches whom the hand of heaven ignores. Beware, beware, beware, lest their dreadful fate be yours!" - The Ghost of Christmas Present, 'Scrooge' 1970.

43. "There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not here anymore." - Tom, 'Scrooge', 1970.

44. "Harry, I've visited you every Christmas for the past five years, and to this day I can never understand this extraordinary ritual of toasting the health of your old uncle Ebenezer. I mean, everyone knows he's the most miserable old skinflint that ever walked God's earth." - Mr. Jorkin, 'Scrooge', 1970.

45.“Christmas is a very busy time for us, Mr. Cratchit. People preparing feasts, giving parties, spending the mortgage money on frivolities. One might say that December is the foreclosure season. Harvest time for the money-lenders.” - Ebenezer Scrooge, 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'.

46. “That is the future. My realm is the present. However, I see a vacant seat by the chimney corner and a crutch without an owner.

If these shadows remain unaltered, I believe the child will die. But, what then? If he’s going to die, he’d better do it and decrease the surplus population.” - Ghost of Christmas Present, 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'.

47. “My speech! Here’s my Christmas speech. Ahem. “Thank you all, and Merry Christmas.” - Fozziwig, 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'.

48. “Heh, a night’s unbroken rest might aid my welfare.” - Ebenezer Scrooge, 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'.

49. “And it’s a tradition for us to take a little nap!” - Jacob Marley, 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'.

50. “That one thing you must remember, or nothing that follows will seem wondrous.” - Gonzo, 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'.

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