This week’s Quote of the Fortnight is festive – celebrating the holiday season with an excerpt from Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, in which miser Ebenezer Scrooge learns the true meaning of giving by being visited by three ghosts. While the story is a now a cliche, the message persists. Take for instance, the speech of Scrooge’s nephew:
“There are many things from 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 -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!”
Quote retrieved from Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3097440-a-christmas-carol
Featured image is in the Public Domain, first edition title page, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol#mediaviewer/File:Charles_Dickens-A_Christmas_Carol-Title_page-First_edition_1843.jpg
