Jacob Marley Quotes

Our opportunities to give of ourselves are indeed limitless, but they are also perishable. There are hearts to gladden. There are kind words to say. There are gifts to be given. There are deeds to be done. There are souls to be saved. As we remember that “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God,” (Mosiah 2:17) we will not find ourselves in the unenviable position of Jacob Marley’s ghost, who spoke to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s immortal "Christmas Carol." Marley spoke sadly of opportunities lost. Said he: 'Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!' Marley added: 'Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!' Fortunately, as we know, Ebenezer Scrooge changed his life for the better. I love his line, 'I am not the man I was.' Why is Dickens’ "Christmas Carol" so popular? Why is it ever new? I personally feel it is inspired of God. It brings out the best within human nature. It gives hope. It motivates change. We can turn from the paths which would lead us down and, with a song in our hearts, follow a star and walk toward the light. We can quicken our step, bolster our courage, and bask in the sunlight of truth. We can hear more clearly the laughter of little children. We can dry the tear of the weeping. We can comfort the dying by sharing the promise of eternal life. If we lift one weary hand which hangs down, if we bring peace to one struggling soul, if we give as did the Master, we can—by showing the way—become a guiding star for some lost mariner.

Remorse is a heavy burden, but in its weight, it has great power to awaken men's souls.

They waited, none of them entirely convinced that the old man wouldn't appear before them again like the ghost of Hamlet's father or Jacob Marley or some other...

If we do nothing but to remove a rock upon which someone might have tripped, though they may never know we did it, is this not our cause, our reason for life?

I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this!

I want to feel embarrassed by my desperation but I’m too busy feeling desperate.

I bleed passion. I’m not entirely sure what this means but I’m greedy over the words. They’re so full of life. And I really need some life to balance out the desperate allure of the dark.

I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. O Jacob Marley! Heaven and the Christmas-time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees!

I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!

Henry Thoreau said that we don’t own things; things own us. Every new object—whether it’s a home, a car, a television, or a fancy phone like that one—is something more we must carry on our backs. It makes me think of Jacob Marley telling Scrooge, ‘These are the chains I forged in life.

Are spirits so involved in men's lives? Marley asked. Mankind is inolved in men's lives. We only help them know how. ...Jacob, all around you, every day, as you walk the miles of earth, there are calls to your spirit and to all others' spirits as well. They come from your fellow beings and from life itself: the way the sun highlights a tree, a bird song lilting across the morning, the smell of flowers. All these are for your joy, but also for more. They call you.

Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in! ‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this.’” “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 laughter in the outset.” “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!

Jacob, love does not prosecute. It seeks neither revenge nor dominance. It does not win at the cost of someone else’s loss. Love only accepts, completely and without reservation.

Lorraine once told me, smile big when you’re sad. Smile big when you’re happy. Smile big when you’re bored. Because regardless how you feel, your face could use a stretch.

We all ascend or descend in steps, the journey to the high road or the low taken in many increments, the sum total determining our eventual destination.

Grief is one of those ideas you think you understand until you meet it face-to-face, gut-to-gut. After a sledgehammer of an introduction it insults you further by taking up residence deep inside your soul. It has the obnoxious melodrama of a teenage girl and the hormonal pulse of a bitter pregnant woman – not to mention the nocturnal stamina of a fucking vampire.

As I walk her streets, the only thing that keeps me from stopping on every block and throwing my hands in the air in amazement are the old Jacob Marley chains we all clank around in, chains forged not so much by sin as by the weight of the weary world. But San Francisco, like the ghosts who visit Scrooge, always offers me another chance. In San Francisco, it is always Christmas morning.

Mankind was my business. The common welfare was mu business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!

Know this...GOD IS BIGGER, than anything you're going through, trust him...KEEP YOUR TRUST IN HIM" -Gary Linville "I don't pretend to know what love is for everyone, but I can tell you what love is for me; love is knowing all about someone, and still wanting to be with them more than any other person, love is trusting them enough to tell them everything about yourself, including the things you might be ashamed of, love is feeling comfortable and safe with someone, but still getting weak knees when they walk into a room and smile at you." "Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw, Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw; Gives exercise to faith and love, Brings every blessing from above." Nahum 1:7, "The Lord is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in him." "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." ♥ Ephesians 4:2-3 “the truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. you just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ― Bob Marley "The thing about the shadows is that they're not all darkness. You need to have light to have shadows" - A. Meredith Walters "Light in the Shadows" (Find You in the Dark #2)

It is required of every man,... that the spirit within him walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world... and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!

I can’t go as far as Barthes in killing off the author, but I’m with him on the importance of the reader. We are the ones, after all, who exist long after the author (the real, physical being) is in the grave, choosing to read the book, deciding if it still has meaning, deciding what it means for us, feeling sympathy or contempt or amusement for its people and their problems. Take just the opening paragraph. If, having read that, we decide the book isn’t worth our time, then the book ceases to exist in any meaningful fashion. Someone else may cause it to live again another day in another reading, but for now, dead as Jacob Marley. Did you have any idea you held so much power?

And don’t get me started on Jesus. I adored the idea of Jesus. If God is Beyoncé, then Jesus was Solange or Stevie Nicks or, perhaps, Bob Marley. He was a down-to-earth, gentle rebel who wore flowing robes and long, curly hair. He preached forgiveness and free love and hung out with prostitutes and hated the government and gave people free food and turned water into wine to liven up the party. He even had a weird stoner cousin, John the Baptist, who ate locusts and honey and lived in the woods, taking people on spiritual journeys in the local river.

Mostly I love Halloween because it is the orange-and-black beginning of a season that tumbles into Thanksgiving, which tumbles into Christmas. And Zombies just seem a little out of place in that. Thanksgiving should have nothing to do with armies of shuffling undead. Don’t get me started on Christmas. The only undead at Christmas should be Jacob Marley, wailing about greed. The iconic image of Halloween should be the pun’kin. The pun’kin, carved into faces that are scary only because we want them to be, winking from every porch. The pun’kin cast in plastic, swinging from the hands of knee-high princesses, leering back from department store shelves, until it gives way to tins of butter cookies. But I fear for the pun’kin. How long before before he is kicked down the street by zombie hordes, booted into obscurity? Young people tell me that no one—no one— wants to dress up like a pun’kin any more. All a pun’kin does they say is sit there, and glow. This may be true, all of it, but try to make a pie out of a zombie, and see where that gets you. Though I hear that, when it comes to pies, your canned zombie is the way to go.

Do you believe in ghosts?” The question caught him off guard, or maybe it was the way she’d asked it, as if she were testing him. “If you mean do I think some part of us remains after we die, then yes, I guess I do. For a while, after my father died, I used to think I could hear him up in his room, crinkling the pages of his newspaper.” “You don’t think it’s just wishful thinking?” He took his time with this one, sensing a new and more critical test. “I don’t,” he said at last. “I think most of us leave this world with unfinished business. Things we never said, chances we never took, wrongs we never righted. Maybe they keep us here. Like Jacob Marley and his chains, we’re tied to this world by our regrets. We can’t move on until we’ve cleaned them up, or at least made our peace with them.

These souls were eternally disconnected, forever separated with a force that would not allow any interchange. They were like another race with no societal tie to each other, bound on their own miserable, independent journeys, alike only in the obvious countenance of pain.

Not only am I a genius at deductive reasoning, but I’m a mother –that’s like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson rolled into one giant fucking ovary.

Oh my god! You still have a crush on Nic don’t you? That’s so cute, brother! You’re like Brand from Adventures in Babysitting.” Miles cackles at this reference but my blood runs cold. Aubrey’s pension for eighties movies has just turned me into a pedophile.

You have a drawer full of dull butter knives and an old pair of kitchen shears. You are hardly armed to the teeth.

Suddenly the anger drains out of me or maybe the sadness just decides to swallow it. It feels like the whole world should be crying. I hope that it is; I hope that if I were to walk outside our front door, I’d see the entire fucking world seizing in pain.

The tip of his finger slides down my face, tilting my chin up so my head is delicately but effectively locked in place. “I get that you feel torn about this but you’re going to have to figure things out because now that I finally have your attention, I’m going to make sure I keep it.

Ukraine and Russia are like Jacob Marely, they are forever chained to their past baggage of historical activities and grievances, their geography and border disputes, who are relegated through conflict and delegated to serve as a lesson to other nations from the past, present, and future of how far geopolitical imperatives could go if they are unwilling to negotiate a practical relationship between them.

Anyone who ever lost someone hates Christmas. Christmas takes your pain and turns it up to eleven. It taunts your loss with every glistening treetops and 'First Noel'. It reminds you that there is no respite, no let-up. Your grief is unrelenting and even if you manage to put it away, like a box of decorations, it will always come back. Reappearing every year, as familiar as Jacob Marley's rotting ghost.

In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Tiny Tim is the personification of Scrooge's dormant conscience that he finally acknowledges and embraces in the end.

Business?! Mankind [should have been] my business. The common welfare [should have been] my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence, were [supposed to have been], all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! ~~Jacob Marley’s ghost to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I wanted to name my husky Cerebus but I rescued him and he came with a ready-made name Marley. I liked it anyway, but then it got me thinking, was his first name meant to be Bob or Jacob?

death may seem quite a terminal affair, yet in its vacuum new possibilities spring forth, not just for those left behind but for the dead as well.