Book: A Christmas Carol in prose

He was smart enough and knew that this is how the world works - there will always be people ready to ridicule a good deed. He understood that those who laugh are blind.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone, everyone! I wish a happy New Year to everyone, everyone in the world! Hooray!

Each of us takes what we can. Only I don’t see any sin in this.

Here, on your sinful land, there are many people who pride themselves on their closeness to us and, prompted by hatred, envy, anger, pride, bigotry and selfishness, do bad deeds, hiding behind our name.

You are too trembling before the opinion of the world. You changed all your previous hopes and dreams for one thing - to become invulnerable to his pin pricks. Didn’t I see how all your noble aspirations perished one after another and a new all-conquering passion, the passion for profit, little by little took possession of you completely!

The soul contained in every person must communicate with people and, following them everywhere, participate in their fate. And those who did not fulfill this during life are doomed to hang around after death. He is condemned to travel around the world and look at the joys and sorrows of people, which he no longer has the power to share, but once he could - for the joy of himself and others.

Here's another crazy one. Some pathetic scribe, with a salary of fifteen shillings, burdened with a wife and children, and there he talks about merry Christmastide! It’s time to run away from such people into Bedlam!

You never know there are good things in the world that were of no use to me. At least the Christmas holidays. These are joyful days - days of mercy, kindness, forgiveness. These are the only days in the entire calendar when people, as if by tacit agreement, freely open their hearts to each other and see in their neighbors - even the poor and disadvantaged - the same people as themselves, wandering the same road to the grave with them, and not some beings of a different breed who should take a different path.

Not a single beggar dared to reach out to him for alms, not a single child dared to ask him what time it was, and not a single soul in his life ever asked him to show the way. It seemed that even the dogs, the guide dogs of the blind, understood what kind of person he was and, seeing him, they hurried to drag their owner into the first entrance or gateway they came across, and then wagged their tail for a long time, as if saying: Yes

What a badass he was, that Scrooge! This is someone who knew how to squeeze out juices, pull out veins, hammer into a coffin, rake, seize, grab, extort... The old sinner knew how, he knew how!

People're not shy of a dozen, koi boast the fact that they are not the devil's brother and they are seen the types, they are usually when they want to prove their daring and recklessness, they are capable of everything - from playing toss to manslaughter, and between these two extremes lies the rather wide field of activity.

Caring - that's what was supposed to be my thing. Public good - that is what I was supposed to strive for. Mercy, compassion, generosity, that's what I had to aim. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.

... even centuries of repentance it is impossible to compensate for lost on earth the opportunity to do a good deed.

Oh, these women! They never do anything halfway and judge everything with determination.