"How is it that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."

"There are some upon this earth of yours, who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

"I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry."

"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered. But she had a large heart!"

"Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!"

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends? … I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last."

"Conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it."

"They are Man's. And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance, this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."

"I don't know what day of the month it is. I don't know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby."

"He's a comical fellow, that's the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."

"Have you never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning my elder brothers born in these later years?"

"These are but shadows of the things that have been. They have no consciousness of us."

I wear the chain I forged in life. 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."

"I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring."