every idiot who goes about with a 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

There's more of gravey than grave about you, whatever you are!" - Scrooge, referring to Marley's ghost which he believes is a hallucination from food poisoning

There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.

Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.

Château and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well-thousands of acres of land-a whole province of France-all France itself-lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star.

He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.

For your popular rumour, unlike the rolling stone of the proverb, is one which gathers a deal of moss in its wanderings up and down.