Ebenezer Scrooge Quotes in A Christmas Carol (2009)

[from trailer]

Ebenezer Scrooge: What do you want with me?

Jacob Marley: You will be haunted by three spirits.

Ebenezer Scrooge: I'd rather not.

Fred: A Merry Christmas to you, uncle!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Bah! Humbug... What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.

Fred: What reason have you to be so dismal? You're rich enough.

Ebenezer Scrooge: BAH! Humbug!

Fred: Don't be cross, Uncle!

Ebenezer Scrooge: What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! 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? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!

Fred: Uncle!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Nephew! Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.

Fred: But you don't keep it!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!

Fred: 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!

[Cratchit applauds]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Spirit! Hear Me! I'm not the man I was!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [Looking with horror upon the children representing Ignorance and Want] Have they no refuse, no resource?

Adult Ignorance: [Suddenly morphing into an adult wielding a knife, and echoing Scrooge's words from earlier] Are there no prisons?

Adult Want: [Suddenly morphing into an adult, and echoing Scrooge's words from earlier] Are there no workhouses?

[from trailer]

[to the Ghost of Christmas Past]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Haunt me no longer!

[From trailer]

[upon meeting the Ghost of Christmas Future]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any spectre I have seen.

[From trailer]

Ebenezer Scrooge: I'm light as a feather! Merry as a schoolboy!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [high pitch tone] You'll never catch me in here... Christmas Pudding no doubt.

[first lines]

Ebenezer Scrooge: [upon viewing Marley in casket] Yes, quite dead. As a doornail.

[From trailer]

[catching himself laughing like the Ghost of Christmas Present]

Ebenezer Scrooge: I've heard that laugh before.

[resumes laughing]

Ebenezer Scrooge: [catching Bob applauding to Fred's speech] Let me hear one word out of you, Cratchit, and you can keep Christmas by losing your position!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [to Marley's ghost] There's more gravy about you than grave.

[from trailer]

[soaring through the air past the moon]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Oh, my!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Cratchit, that slovenly, good for nothing... Even a tiny mouse is more tidy!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Snowman!

Bob Cratchit: [spotting two mice on Scrooge's shoulder] Mr. Scrooge, sir, there's two mice.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Never mind the mice, they were here on time.

Bob Cratchit: I'll make it up to you, Sir!

Ebenezer Scrooge: No, Mr Cratchit! I'll make it up to you!

Kermit the Frog: If you please Mr. Scrooge, it's gotten colder, and the bookkeeping staff would like an extra shovel full of coal for the fire?

Rat #1: We can't do the bookkeeping, all our pens have turned to inkcicles!

Rat #2: Our assets are frozen!

Ebenezer Scrooge: How would the bookkeeping staff like to be suddenly... UNEMPLOYED?

Rats: [singing] HEAT WAVE. This is my island in the sun...

Ebenezer Scrooge: Bob Cratchit, I've had my fill of this.

Miss Piggy: And I have had my fill of you, Mr. Scrooge.

Ebenezer Scrooge: And therefore, Bob Cratchit...

Miss Piggy: And therefore, you can leave this house at once.

Ebenezer Scrooge: And therefore, I'm about to raise your salary!

Miss Piggy: Ooh, and I am about to raise you right off the pavement...! Pardon?

Kermit the Frog: Pardon?

Jacob Marley: Why do you doubt your senses?

Ebenezer Scrooge: Because a little thing can effect them. A slight disorder of the stomach can make them cheat. You may be a bit of undigested beef, a blob of mustard, a crumb of cheese. Yes. There's more gravy than of grave about you.

Robert Marley: More gravy than of grave?

Jacob Marley: What a terrible pun. Where do you get those jokes?

Robert Marley: Leave comedy to the bears, Ebenezer.

Ebenezer Scrooge: [in the graveyard] Must we return to this place? There is something else that I must know, is that not true? Spirit, I know what I must ask. I fear to, but I must. Who was the wretched man whose death brought so much glee and happiness to others?

[the spirit points to a headstone, Scrooge begins moving toward it, then turns back, frightened]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Answer me one more question. Are these the shadows of things that *will* be, or are they the shadows of things that *may* be only?

[the spirit points again at the gravestone, Scrooge slowly approaches it]

Ebenezer Scrooge: These events can be changed! A life can be made right.

[he clears the snow from the stone and reads]

Ebenezer Scrooge: [in tears] Ebenezer Scrooge! Oh please Spirit, no! Hear me, I, I am not the man I was! Why would you show me this if I am past all hope?...

[sobbing]

Ebenezer Scrooge: I, I *will* honor Christmas, and try to keep it all the year! I will live my life in the past, the present and the future. I will not shut out the lessons the spirits have taught me! Tell me that I may sponge out the writing on this stone!

[kneeling, clutching at the spirit's robe]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Oh Spirit, please speak to me!

Ebenezer Scrooge: What right have you to be merry? You're poor enough.

Fred: What right have you to be dismal? You're rich enough.

Rizzo the Rat: He's got 'im there. The old boy's speechless!

Ebenezer Scrooge: If I could work my will, every idiot who goes around with "a Merry Christmas" on his lips would be cooked with his own turkey and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!

Rizzo the Rat: Well, not quite speechless.

Ebenezer Scrooge: 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: I don't think I've ever met anybody like you before.

Ghost of Christmas Present: Really? Over 1800 of my brothers have come before me!

Ebenezer Scrooge: 1800? Imagine the grocery bills!

Ebenezer Scrooge: I'll see you tomorrow morning at 8.

Rats: [whispering] Ask him, ask him.

Kermit the Frog: Tomorrow's Christmas, sir.

Ebenezer Scrooge: 8:30, then.

Kermit the Frog: Uh, if you please Mr. Scrooge, half an hour off hardly seems customary for Christmas Day.

Rats: No, no.

Ebenezer Scrooge: How much time off *is* customary?

Kermit the Frog: Why, uh... The whole day.

Rats: Yeah, yeah!

Ebenezer Scrooge: The *entire* day?

Rats: No, no. That's the frog's idea...

Kermit the Frog: If you please sir, why open the office tomorrow? Other businesses will be closed; there'll be no one to do business with. It'll waste a lot of expensive coal for the fire!

Rats: Yeah!

Ebenezer Scrooge: It's a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every December the 25th. But as I seem to be the only man who knows that... take the day off.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Let us deal with the eviction notices for tomorrow, Mr. Cratchit.

Kermit the Frog: Uh, tomorrow's Christmas, sir.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Very well. You may gift wrap them.

Ebenezer Scrooge: I do not make merry at Christmas...

Fred: That is certainly true.

Ebenezer Scrooge: And I cannot afford to make other people merry.

Fred: That is certainly *not* true!

Ebenezer Scrooge: This is Bob Crachit's house?

Ghost of Christmas Present: How do you know that?

Ebenezer Scrooge: You just told me.

Ghost of Christmas Present: Well, I'm *usually* trustworthy.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Spirit, show me no more. Why do you delight in torturing me?

Ghost of Christmas Past: I told you, these are the shadows of the things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Leave Me!

Robert Marley: You will be haunted by three spirits.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Haunted? I've already had enough of that.

Jacob Marley: Without these visits, you cannot hope to avoid the path we tread.

Robert Marley: Expect the first ghost tonight, when the bell tolls one!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Can't I meet them all at once and get it over with?

Ebenezer Scrooge: [Having just watched the Cratchits mourning Tiny Tim, addresses the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come] Oh, spirit, must there be a Christmas that brings this awful scene?

[Voice breaking]

Ebenezer Scrooge: How can we endure it?

Ghost of Christmas Past: Let us see another Christmas in this place.

Ebenezer Scrooge: They were all very much the same. Nothing ever changed.

Ghost of Christmas Past: You changed.

Ebenezer Scrooge: You're a little absent-minded, spirit.

Ghost of Christmas Present: No, I'm a LARGE absent-minded spirit!

Ebenezer Scrooge: What business has brought you here?

Ghost of Christmas Past: Your welfare.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Heh, a night's unbroken rest might aid my welfare.

Ghost of Christmas Past: Your salvation, then.

Ghost of Christmas Past: There was of course, another Christmas Eve with this young woman. Some years later.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Oh please... do not show me that Christmas.

[Describing Fozziwig]

Ebenezer Scrooge: What an employer he was. As hard and ruthless as a rose petal!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?

Ghost of Christmas Past: I am.

Ebenezer Scrooge: But... you're just a child!

Ghost of Christmas Past: I can remember nearly 1900 years. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Why do you walk the earth? Why'd you come to persecute me? And what is that great chain you wear?

Jacob Marley's Ghost: I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it, link by link and yard by yard, while on Earth, and now I will never be rid of it, any more than you will ever be rid of yours!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [shocked] Mine?

Jacob Marley's Ghost: It was as heavy and long as this seven Christmases ago. It's a terrible, ponderous chain you are making, Scrooge!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Tell me more, Marley, but speak comforts to me!

Jacob Marley's Ghost: I have none to give.

Ebenezer Scrooge: None?

Jacob Marley's Ghost: Comfort comes from other sources, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is given by other ministers than I to other kinds of men than you. When I lived, my spirit, like yours, never walked beyond the narrow limits of our counting house.

Ebenezer Scrooge: But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.

Jacob Marley's Ghost: Mankind should be our business, Ebenezer, but we seldom attend to it... as you shall see.

Jacob Marley's Ghost: [Scrooge has arrived in Hell] Ah! So there you are.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Marley! Where am I?

Jacob Marley's Ghost: I should have thought it was obvious. I heard you were coming down today, so I thought I'd come to greet you, show you to your quarters. Nobody else wanted to.

Ebenezer Scrooge: That's... that's very civil of you, Marley. I... I... I... I am dead, aren't I?

Jacob Marley's Ghost: As a coffin nail.

Ebenezer Scrooge: I... I had rather hoped I'd end up in Heaven.

Jacob Marley's Ghost: Did you, indeed? You may find your office here rather small, but not, I trust, unfamiliar.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Office?

Jacob Marley's Ghost: Your activities in life were so pleasing to Lucifer that he has appointed you to be his personal clerk. A singular honor. You will be to him, so to speak, what Bob Cratchit was to you.

Ebenezer Scrooge: That's not fair! It's... it's...

Jacob Marley's Ghost: Diabolical. I must confess, I find it not altogether unamusing.

Nephew Fred: A merry Christmas, Uncle Ebenezer! God save you.

Ebenezer Scrooge: God save me from Christmas. It's another humbug.

Nephew Fred: Christmas a humbug? Come, now. I'm sure you don't mean that.

Ebenezer Scrooge: And I'm sure that I do mean that. Merry Christmas, indeed. What reason have you got to be merry? You're poor enough.

Nephew Fred: What reason have you got to be miserable? You're rich enough.

Ebenezer Scrooge: There is no such thing as rich enough, only poor enough.

Nephew Fred: Don't be so dismal, Uncle Ebenezer!

Ebenezer Scrooge: What else can I be when I live in a world full of fools babbling "Merry Christmas" at one another? What's Christmas but a time for finding yourself a year older and not a day richer? There's nothing merry in that. If I could work my will, nephew, every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Ebenezer Scrooge: [about Bob Cratchit] Fifteen shillings a week, a wife and five children... and he still talks of a Merry Christmas!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [watching Fezziwig's Christmas party] What a marvelous man...

Ghost of Christmas Past: What's so marevlous? He's merely spent a few pounds of your mortal money. Three or four, perhaps. What is that to be deserving of so much praise?

Ebenezer Scrooge: You don't understand. He had the power to make us happy or unhappy, to make our work a pleasure or a burden. It's nothing to do with money!

Tom Jenkins: Hot broth, Mr. Scrooge. A small token of Christmas esteem, with the compliments of Tom Jenkins.

Ebenezer Scrooge: No.

Tom Jenkins: And there'll be a free can of broth, sir, every night for the coming year in gratitude for your infinite kindness... in giving me another two weeks to pay.

Ebenezer Scrooge: One week.

Tom Jenkins: Ten days?

Ebenezer Scrooge: *One* week.

Tom Jenkins: [defeated] One week.

Ebenezer Scrooge: And put a lid on that stuff, I'll take it home.

Ebenezer Scrooge: [to Bob] You still don't recognise me, do you Cratchit?

Bob Cratchit: Yes. No. Er... Father Christmas?

Ebenezer Scrooge: Heh heh!

[pulls down his mask briefly]

Mrs. Cratchit: Mr. Scrooge? He's gone mad!

Bob Cratchit: No, no, my dear, I'm sure there's an explanation.

Ebenezer Scrooge: I want to see you in my office on Monday morning, when I will double your wages.

Bob Cratchit: He *has* gone mad!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [singing] I will start anew / I will make amends / and I will make quite certain / that the story ends / on a note of hope / on a strong amen / and I'll thank the world / and remember when / I was able to begin again!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [Ghost of Christmas Present has brought Scrooge to Bob Cratchit's home] I want to look in the window.

Ghost of Christmas Present: It will cost you nothing, which I'm sure is good news for you.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Will they be able to see me?

Ghost of Christmas Present: No, which I'm sure is good news for them.

[trying to collect Christmas donations]

1st Portly Gentleman: Mr. Scrooge, sir, we find it more than usually desirable than we make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Excellent! Than I suggest you do so!

2nd Portly Gentleman: What may we put down for you, sir?

Ebenezer Scrooge: Nothing, sir.

1st Portly Gentleman: Ah, you wish to remain anonymous.

Ebenezer Scrooge: I wish to be left alone, sir! That is what I wish! I don't make myself merry at Christmas and I cannot afford to make idle people merry. I have been forced to support the establishments I have mentioned through taxation and God knows they cost more than they're worth. Those who are badly off must go there.

2nd Portly Gentleman: Many would rather die than go there.

Ebenezer Scrooge: If they'd rather die, then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population, Good night, gentlemen.

[walks away, then turns back]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Humbug!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Who are you?

Ghost of Christmas Past: I am the spirit whose coming was foretold to you.

Ebenezer Scrooge: You don't look like a ghost.

Ghost of Christmas Past: Thank you.

Ebenezer Scrooge: May I inquire as to more precisely who or what you are?

Ghost of Christmas Past: I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Long past?

Ghost of Christmas Past: No. Your past.

Ebenezer Scrooge: What business brings you here?

Ghost of Christmas Past: Your welfare.

Ebenezer Scrooge: [scoffs] To be wakened by a ghost at one o'clock in the morning is hardly conducive to my welfare!

Ghost of Christmas Past: Your redemption, then.

[Scrooge is covertly watching Harry's Christmas party]

Tom - Friend of Harry's: 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.

Ebenezer Scrooge: [glaring] Who's he?

Ghost of Christmas Present: Oh... just a friend.

Nephew Fred: My dear Tom, it's very simple. He is indeed a despicable old miser, worse than you could ever possibly imagine.

[Ghost of Christmas Present bursts out laughing]

Ebenezer Scrooge: You find this amusing?

Ghost of Christmas Present: Believe it or not, he likes you.

Nephew Fred: See, I look at it this way: If I can wish a Merry Christmas to him, who is beyond dispute the most obnoxious and parsimonious of all living creatures, then I know in my heart that I am truly a man of goodwill.

Ebenezer Scrooge: [rising to lunge at Fred] Scoundrel!

Ghost of Christmas Present: Wait! There's more to come.

Nephew Fred: And besides... I like old Scrooge!

Ghost of Christmas Present: What did I tell you?

Jacob Marley's Ghost: You will be visited by three ghosts.

Ebenezer Scrooge: I... I think I'd rather not.

Ebenezer Scrooge: I hate life!

Ghost of Christmas Present: Nonsense, man! Why?

Ebenezer Scrooge: Because life hates me, that's why!

Ghost of Christmas Present: Scrooge, you're an even bigger fool than I took you for!

Ebenezer Scrooge: [asking about the ghost's elder brothers] How many of them are there?

Ghost of Christmas Present: What year is this?

Ebenezer Scrooge: Eighteen hundred and sixty.

Ghost of Christmas Present: Then I have eighteen hundred and fifty-nine brothers.

[a knock at the door]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Fire and damnation! Don't they know that I'm trying to run a business here?

[flings the door open]

Nephew Fred: Uncle Ebenezer! I cannot tell you what a joy it is to see your happy, smiling face.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Oh... it's you.

Ebenezer Scrooge: 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: And be good enough to leave me alone during business hours.

Nephew Fred: Seven o'clock on Christmas Eve? That's not business hours, that's drudgery for the sake of it, and an insult to all men of goodwill.

Bob Cratchit: Here, here!

Nephew Fred: [surprised] Thank you, Bob Cratchit.

[Scrooge slowly turns on Cratchit]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Another word from you, Cratchit, and you will celebrate Christmas by losing your position.

[He then slowly turns back on Fred]

Ebenezer Scrooge: As for you, nephew, if you were in my will, I'd disinherit you!

Ghost of Christmas Present: How many of my brothers have you rejected in your miserable lifetime!

Ebenezer Scrooge: I have never met any of your brothers, sir!

Ghost of Christmas Present: You have never looked for them!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Please let me stay!

Spirit of Christmas Present: Nonsense! You don't want to stay!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Yes, I do!

Spirit of Christmas Present: No! You don't like Christmas!

Ebenezer Scrooge: Yes! Yes I do! I like Christmas! I LOVE Christmas!

[Scrooge has come in after being visited by the ghosts]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Fred! My dear nephew! How are you?

Fred: Well who is this?

Ebenezer Scrooge: It's me! Your uncle Scrooge! Smile makes a difference, doesn't it?

Ebenezer Scrooge: [to Marley's ghost] We'll soon see how real you are.

[Calling out the window]

Ebenezer Scrooge: Watch! There's an intruder in my room!

Leader of watch: Right up, sir - law and order!

Jacob Marley's ghost: It was for your welfare that I made this visit, Ebenezer Scrooge.

[He disappears]

Leader of watch: [unable to find him] Your intruder seems to have extruded, if I may say so, sir.

Ebenezer Scrooge: He was here! He was a spirit!

Leader of watch: [laughing] Of course, sir! A fine night for spirits - of one form or another, sir!

Spirit of Christmas Present: [Scrooge laughs while watching the Cratchits] You laugh?

Ebenezer Scrooge: Laugh? I envy them.

Ebenezer Scrooge: To Tiny Tim I'll be a second father.

Ebenezer Scrooge: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all the world!