Know Thyself through A Christmas Carol
You probably have heard versions of some of Dickens’ great words in A Christmas Carol, probably a bit of ‘(Christmas) has done me good, and will do me good’, a ‘Golden Idol has displaced me’ and ‘Scrooge was better than his word…knew how to keep Christmas well…bless us everyone.’ But as with Dickens works, I love best the bits you probably never heard. Therefore, in homage to the Man who invented Christmas on Christmas Eve, see what you think of the exact quotes from A Christmas Carol exactly as Dickens wrote them:
-When Scrooge’s Nephew Fred when he comes to visit him in his office on Christmas Eve:
‘There are many things for which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say.” returned the nephew: “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round….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:”
-When Belle breaks up with Scrooge, I never realized she was dressed in mourning as her parents just died leaving her penniless:
“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”
“What idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.
“A golden one.”
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professed to condemn iwht such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”
“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “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 off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrossed you. Have I not?”
-The Ending:
‘Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, FOR GOOD, at which some people did not have their fill of laugher in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up there eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and 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! And so, as tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!’
The End
-Charles Dickens
Happy Holidays.
Last Updated on 01/04/2026 by Death of Hypatia Inc.
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