Have a Happy Christmas

Here are some literary Christmas quotes to encourage you to feel merry and bright today.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

'I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!'

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol:

'I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.’

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women:

’The rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting.’

Jane Austen, Emma:

'At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather. I was snowed up at a friend’s house once for a week. Nothing could be pleasanter.’

Bess Streeter Aldrich, Song of Years:

'Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart...filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.'

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss:

'Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.’

Laura Ingalls Wilder:

'Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.'

Maya Angelou:

'I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.’

Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway:

'Christmas is like candy; it slowly melts in your mouth sweetening every taste bud, making you wish it could last forever.'

Nick Hornby, About A Boy:

'It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life.’

Washington Irving:

'Christmas! 'Tis the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.'

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit:

'If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.’

Hamilton Wright Mabie:

'Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!'

Stella Gibbons, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm:

'Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.’

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers:

'Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!'

Tove Jansson:

'Christmas always rustled. It rustled every time, mysteriously, with silver and gold paper, tissue paper and a rich abundance of shiny paper, decorating and hiding everything and giving a feeling reckless extravagance.’

Robert Lynd:

'Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.’

Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm:

'I ask you to answer me fairly: is not additional eating an ordinary Englishman’s ordinary idea of Christmas day?’

Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten:

'I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of our hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.'

P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit:

'It being Christmas eve, there was, as I had foreseen, a great deal of revelry and what not.’