Quotes to Support Your Essay:
All of the following CAN be considered strong quotes, but only if you use them
at the correct times! Remember—a strong quote must support both the thesis
statement of your essay AND the topic sentence of each paragraph!
“I present him to you: Ebenezer Scrooge…England’s most tight-fisted hand at the
grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old
sinner! secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster,” (Horovitz, 3).
“He never painted out my name from the window…sometimes people new to our business
call him Scrooge and sometimes they call him Marley. He answers to both names…it’s
cheaper than painting a new sign, isn’t it?” (Horovitz, 3).
“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips,
should be boiled in his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart,”
(Horovitz, 5).
“I am sure that I always thought of Christmastime, when it has come round—as a good
time: the only time I know of, when men and women seem to open their 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,” (Horovitz, 5).
“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that…it’s not my business.” (Horovitz, 8).
“I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard. Is its pattern
strange to you? Or would you know, you, Scrooge, the weight and length of the strong coil
you bear yourself?” (Horovitz, 13).
“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy,
forbearance, benevolence, were all my business,” (Horovitz, 13).
“I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate,”
(Horovitz, 13).
“Not to sound ungrateful, sir, and really, please do understand that I am plenty obliged for
your concern, but, really, kind spirit, it would have done all the better for my welfare to
have been left alone all together, to have slept peacefully through this night,” (Horovitz,
16).
“Ah! It’s too late…there was a boy singing a Christmas Carol outside my door last night. I
should like to have given him something: that’s all,” (Horovitz, 18).
“He is the best, best, the very and absolute best! If I ever open a firm of my own, I shall treat
my apprentices with the same dignity and the same grace,” (Horovitz, 21).
“Fezziwig had the power to make us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or
burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. The happiness he gave is quite as great as if it cost him a
fortune,” (Horovitz, 21).
“I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now! That’s all!” (Horovitz,
21).
“You fear the world too much. Have I not seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one,
until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you? Have I not?” (Horovitz, 22).
“Spirit, conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and learnt a
lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it,”
(Horovitz, 27).
“Do you sprinkle your kindness on any particular people or on all people?”
“To any person kindly given. And to the very poor most of all.”
“Why to the very poor most?”
“Because the very poor need it most,” (Horovitz, 28).
“Spirit, tell me if Tiny Tim will live…no, no kind spirit! Say he will be spared!” (Horovitz, 3132).
“This is Christmas Day, and I should like to drink to the health of the man who employs me
and allows me to earn my living and our support and that man is Ebenezer Scrooge…”
(Horovitz, 32).
“Spirit, it must be time for us to take our leave. I feel in my heart that it is…that I must thin
on that which I have seen here…” (Horovitz, 33).
“Spirit, please, make me visible! Make me audible! I want to talk with my nephew and my
niece!” (Horovitz, 35).
“It’s likely to be a cheap funeral, for upon my life, I don’t know of a living soul who’d care to
venture to it” (Horovitz, 37).
“If he wanted to keep (his possessions) after he was dead, the wicked old screw, why
wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he’s have somebody to kook after him
when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by
himself,” (Horovitz, 38).
“Scrooge pulls back the blanket. The corpse is, of course, Scrooge, who screams. He falls
aside the bed; weeping,” (Horovitz, 40).
“Spirit! Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I would have been but for
this intercourse…assure me that I yet may change these shadows that you have shown me
by an altered life!” (Horovitz, 41).
“I will honor 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,” (Horovitz, 41).
“I will live in the Past, in the Present, and in the Future! The Spirits of all Three shall strive
within me!” (Horovitz, 46).
“I am light as a feather, I am happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. Merry
Christmas to Everybody….I’d much rather be a baby than be an old wreck like me or
Marley!” (Horovitz, 47).
“Oh, my, MY!!! Look at the size of that turkey, will you…I’ll give you money for a cab…I’ve
written the precise address down just here on this…Bob Cratchit’s house. Now he’s not to
know who sends him this” (Horovitz, 49).
“My dear sir! How do you do? I do hope that you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of
you. A Merry Christmas…Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness
to—(He whispers into the man’s ear)” (Horovitz, 50).
“I have come to dinner. May I come in, Fred?” (Horovitz, 50).
“Now I’ll tell you what, Cratchit. I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And
therefore…I am…about…to…raise…your salary,” (Horovitz, 50).
“A Merry Christmas Bob…I’ll raise your salary and endeavor to assist your struggling family
and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon,” (Horovitz, 51).
“Bob! Make up the fires and buy another coal scuttle before you dot another I, Bob. It’s too
cold in this place! We need warmth and cheer, Bob Cratchit!” (Horovitz, 51).
“Scrooge was better than his word…to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father.
He became as good a friend, as good a master, as good a man, as the good old city
knew…and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well,” (Horovitz,
52).