A Christmas Carol

“Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

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.

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

“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?”

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.