Monday, December 6, 2010

"A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas."

I am very much enjoying the book A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. If you have never read it you should. It is very short and only takes a few hours to get through. Very enjoyable. I am not sure why I never read it sooner.

A few of my favorite lines from the book:

"It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child Himself."


"External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty."


"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that, while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor."


"There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his head to be."


"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"


And of course:
"I will honour 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. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

Elevator Psychology


I saw this at a YW training and had to share. I hope you watch it and enjoy it as much as I do.