Marley's Ghost Quotes

Of course they had more chains on him than Scrooge saw on Marley's ghost, but he could have kicked up dickens if he'd wanted. That's a pun, son.

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.

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever

I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' Yeah, well, whoever wrote that was a friggin' idiot.

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...

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly.

Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. `Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my 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!

Kendall, you’re delving into an area you shouldn’t mess with,” she warns.

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.

Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Marley’s face. Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead.

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.

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.

He looks to her like the very ghost of himself, come back from the future to provide her with a warning.

It is required of every man... that the spirit within him should 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.

Marley’s ghost nodded and stooped over, lifting up a length of the chains and letting Sam scrabble free. Then he threw the chains over one shoulder like a cloak. ‘What’s the story with the chains anyway?’ said Sam, feeling a little emboldened now he was free. ‘Are you on a leash?’ Again the unearthly voice surged up from the black cave of the spectre’s mouth. ‘No,’ said Marley’s ghost. ‘The chains are not to bind me. They are to remind me.’ The word ‘remind’ echoed around the graveyard, bouncing from tombstone to tombstone.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.

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

My Lord, the tale begins with a ghost... - Prince of Sorrows

Life is a battle,” he said. “Books are weapons.

Anyone who ever lost someone hates Christmas. Christmas takes your pain and turns it up to eleven. It taunts your loss with every glistening treetop and First Noel. It reminds you that there is no respite, not 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.