c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Christmas is never over, unless you want it to be.
— Lauren Myracle, Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
The three phases of Santa belief: (1) Santa is real.(2) Santa isn't real.(3) Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
— Alton Thompson
Christmas Eve, I give him packages which I open for him, since the bows and paper represent more labor than he could manage: music videos by the Nashville singers he thinks particularly sexy, fleece-lined slippers decorated with images of bacon and eggs, and a book about breeds of dogs. He says he wishes he had something for me to open, but I don’t want anything except to have him here. There’s nothing more he could give me than his life, right now, his being with me.
— Mark Doty, Heaven's Coast: A Memoir
I don't leave a note.There's nothing else to do. At first, I'd wanted to write Merry Christmas on the box somewhere, but I decide against it. This isn't about words.It's about glowing lights and small things that are big.
— Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger
The door opens with a rusted jingle, and an animatronic Santa insults my moral virtue three times. Ho, ho, ho.
— Kiersten White, My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories
There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!
— Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot's Christmas
Once again, we come to the holiday season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
— Dave Barry
Christmases are never the same. They change from year to year, and they are never really perfect, no matter how hard we try to force them to be so. What is perfect is the miracle in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago and the love of God that continues to burst through the chaos of human imperfection; Christmas is finding the Christ Child radiant beneath the daily grime of life.
— Julie K. Hogan
Jeff- "A Hanukkah tradition is making potato pancakes. For something a little different, use a sweet potato. Anything you'd like to add, Walter?"Walter- "Accept Jesus as your Savior or you'll burn in Hell for all eternity.
— Jeff Dunham
You're thinking that if the North Pole has little elves and shape-shifting reindeer that maybe werewolves aren't quite so farfetched. Am I right? Well, you're wrong. There's no such thing as werewolves. That would just be crazy.
— Candi Kay, Willy the Kinky Elf & His Bad-Ass Reindeer
It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.
— Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
So now we pause. Still. Ponder. Hush. Wait. Each day of Advent, He gives you the gift of time, so you have time to be still and wait. Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved. For the Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself the robe of righteousness for us worn out. For Jesus, who makes precisely what none of us can but all of us want: Christmas.
— Ann Voskamp
I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
I look at my snow boots, counting the grommets while I try to name what I'm feeling. This has been a problem lately. It's never been a problem before—I've been happy, and sad, and frustrated.I've felt angry and sentimental.I've loved. I've been loved back.Maintaining long moments of wordless eye contact with the man who is supposed to make me feel okay about going blind, noticing all the exact shades of blue and how I can always tell he's going to smile before he does, pretending I'm not responding to some tension between us?I'm a little exhausted.
— Mary Ann Rivers, Snowfall
I don't mind the dark, and because it's Christmas, we've been busy putting lights up everywhere. High, so everyone knows we're okay.
— Mary Ann Rivers, Snowfall
For me, there isn't some miracle cure, this is my life, or my disease will progress and my life will change focus again, and I'll have another new life.I need C to stay right where he is now because for now, I don't know enough to move from where I am.My hypothesis is that the light will come back, both outside and inside me.I'm afraid and angry, but the light is a theory I want to prove.Until then, I just have to keep the experiment going with as many controls as possible.One bus, back and forth.One store.One man, his words under glass.
— Mary Ann Rivers, Snowfall
I wonder if he practices making awkward and nerdy look sort of cool. Like he fills his house with furniture that is the wrong scale for his tall body and buys plaid shirts in bulk and tells his barber to leave crazy, too-long pieces of hair mixed in with the regularly cut hair so everything always looks messy.Then he runs his hands through his hair and puts on his plaid shirts and uses mirrors to watch himself sit in uncomfortable furniture until comfortable furniture looks like it's the one with the problem.
— Mary Ann Rivers, Snowfall
I can't ignore his one-sided almost smile or his methylene blue eyes. I can't ignore his pretty shoulders or his arms. I can't ignore his big hands, his shoulder-blade-spanning hands, the way the tendons in them lock to every knuckle and speculate on things like capability and dexterity and, of course, the scar over those knuckles on his left hand that I've noticed before, and its reminder that he has a life and has been hurt in it.
— Mary Ann Rivers, Snowfall
Christmas comes but once a year, starts in August ends in July
— Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes volume 2
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
— Charles Dickens
You wanted a peaceful, comfortable Christmas, with all reminders of poverty, injustice, or other people's griefs well out of sight, so as not to disturb your pleasure. That isn't what Christmas is about, Wallace. Christmas is about offering hope to all people, not just those like ourselves. Christmas is about everyone: rich or poor, friend or stranger. The moment you exclude anyone, you exclude yourself.
— Anne Perry, A Christmas Hope
Excluding the God of providence in your life’s configuration and design is like removing the thermostat from a thermodynamic system.
— Ikechukwu Joseph
Christmas used to be a good "idea" 'til somebody came up with the concept of giving wrapped up presents to each other... :-)
— oliver mally
At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving the others with God's own love and concern.
— Mother Teresa, Love: A Fruit Always in Season
Ma!" she cried. "There is a Santa Claus, isn't there?""Of course there's a Santa Claus," said Ma. "The older you are, the more you know about Santa Claus," she said. "You are so big now, you know he can't be just one man, don't you? You know he is everywhere on Christmas Eve. He is in the Big Woods, and in Indian Territory, and far away in York State, and here. He comes down all the chimneys at the same time. You know that, don't you?""Yes, Ma," said Mary and Laura."Well," said Ma. "Then you see--""I guess he is like angels," Mary said, slowly. And Laura could see that, just as well as Mary could.Then Ma told them something else about Santa Claus. He was everywhere, and besides that, he was all the time.Whenever anyone was unselfish, that was Santa Claus.Christmas Eve was the time when everybody was unselfish. On that one night, Santa Claus was everywhere, because everybody, all together, stopped being selfish and wanted other people to be happy. And in the morning you saw what that had done."If everybody wanted everybody else to be happy all the time, then would it be Christmas all the time?" Laura asked, and Ma said, "Yes, Laura.
— Laura Ingalls Wilder
Mary knew God loved her. From the moment Gabriel appeared to her, Mary has a distinct sense that God’s presence was with her and His hand upon her. She didn’t understand everything that was happening, but she was certain that God would be with her through it all.
— Stormie Omartian, The Miracle of Christmas: 15 Inspirational Stories to Read Through the Advent Season
When asking God for direction, ask Him to give you ears to hear it and the will and strength to follow it. Say, “God show me what to do and enable me to do it.
— Stormie Omartian, The Miracle of Christmas: 15 Inspirational Stories to Read Through the Advent Season
Christmas is everything that God would do, and nothing that we would imagine Him doing.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
With this in mind, Ava tells herself to be present and celebrate the holiday instead of wishing it was over. After all, one is given only a certain number of Christmases in one's life.
— Elin Hilderbrand, Winter Street
Christmas is a clandestinely ingenious script that outlines a plan to reclaim mankind through a strategy unimagined and unimaginable. This strategy involved God writing His own death into the script.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
We cannot humanize the fact that the story was penned to have the eternal God, Who Himself knows no beginning nor is in need of one, choose to experience a beginning. That is genius in and of itself.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas was an ingenious plan designed by God to lay siege to the hearts of all men by submitting Himself to the greed of all men.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas was about understanding that servanthood would win the hearts of men for eternity, where raw power might win them only for a moment, if at all.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is not a story birthed of a humanized god for it simply doesn’t fit into the rubric of such an emaciated plot.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
There’s something inherently majestic about Christmas that seems to have been abandoned by us; something flippantly cast aside, something that was foolishly abandoned and was tragically forgotten in the abandonment.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
But, why? You punished me, okay? You've forbidden me to," I shudder, "cum when you know my little body can only take so much of holding it in. I have a nine-inch dick, Randy. That stuff needs to come out.
— Candi Kay, Willy the Kinky Elf & His Bad-Ass Reindeer
How you felt?" he asks, still looking like he's trying to hide a smirk."Oh, shut up. I'm going now. I'm sorry I bothered you, your Highness of Reindeerness," I say, with more than a little sarcasm. "I promise not to ever disturb you again.
— Candi Kay, Willy the Kinky Elf & His Bad-Ass Reindeer
He smiled at her as Julia threw a snowball at Calla that missed her by a mile. Grinning, Calla quickly armed herself and threw one at Julia; only it missed her too and hit Guthrie in the crotch. Good thing it was soft snow. He grinned and wiped off the snow, slowly, deliberately, wolfishly.Calla looked like she could burst into flames, she was so red faced. He started laughing.
— Terry Spear, A Highland Wolf Christmas
Just when the air turns frosty and the days shrink into darkness, the Christmas season arrives in America. It begins at Thanksgiving--with families, feasts and football. Then during the next six weeks we shop and decorate, worship and make merry. Our hearts warm in the winter cold. We find compassion for strangers, and we remember there are miracles. Pious or festive or both, we join together in an extraordinary national festival.
— J. Curtis Sanburn
Christmas was a response of the choice of mankind to take its existence into its own hands and chart its own course, liberally scripting its own ethics, crafting its own moral system, and choosing to believe that it was the creator and therefore master of its fate. Christmas is a response to mankind reeling off the pages of history and splattering the blood of lives and generations wasted along its free-wheeling course.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is God saving mankind from the folly of mankind’s grandiose sense of greatness.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is God being relentless to the point that He would die in that relentlessness.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Shrewdly crafted political agendas, innately complex philosophies, man-made religions, governments and regimes of every sort, and all the endless volumes of man-manufactured wisdom and penned prose all completely failed to redeem mankind and make us better. When the best of our efforts failed to redeem the worst of our behaviors, God declared enough as enough and a baby was born.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is a response to bring mankind back, to restore some original intent that could never be even remotely restored by any effort of mankind regardless of how grand or majestic any such effort might be.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is not something that sprang from the musings of some person who creatively devised caricatures of elves, spiraling candy canes, visions of a magical city whose foundation was nestled in the far reaches of the North Pole, or embellishments of a kindly bishop spun by myth into a bearded old man in a red suit.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas was an intentionally intentional decision of the greatest sort ever devised that would result in the greatest cost ever conceived
—  God would die.
It was the greatest, most intricate, most ingenious and most costly rescue mission in all of human history.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
600Christmas is about giving from the heart more than giving from the store.
— Toni Sorenson
Don’t spoil Christmas Day by anticipating how it will be. Let is unfold as it does, and be grateful for whatever comes.
— Toni Sorenson
Hot cocoa and cold toes remind me of Christmas.
— Toni Sorenson
Christmas is a blanket that warms our cold hearts.
— Toni Sorenson
Christmas is not a date on a calendar. It’s more than a state of mind. It’s a condition of the heart.
— Toni Sorenson
The month of December isn’t magical because it sparkles. It’s magical because it changes people’s hearts … at least momentarily.
— Toni Sorenson
Merry Christmas!' someone shouted. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. 'Merry Christmas!''Merry Christmas!''C-cookies for ever'body!' Sammy hollered. And looking both ways, they all fled across to the light, and the warmth, and the books, and the mystery.
— Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good
Let's not have forced gaiety this Christmas, said Nora, like it was a dish. We'll have a tiny bit of it, I said.
— Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows
People think the only time the earth is renewed is in spring. I find it’s renewed around Christmastime when hard, old hearts are softened. When children’s laughter drowns out anguish. When magic transforms the dull into something beautiful and sparkly. I find that Christmas time changes me … from the inside out, and even for a moment fills me with youth and hope again.
— Toni Sorenson
Christmas seems to say that paradise lost and longed for does not have to be paradise given up on.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
You don’t remember the gifts you are given
—  you remember the giver and how their love made you feel.
If you hate what you get for Christmas, try to focus on the person who gave the gift to you, not what came in the box.
— Toni Sorenson
When the holly’s in the redAnd the pine is in the green,When the mornings all are frosty,In a brilliant silver sheenThen I love to go a’ walkingRambling here and there, quite slow,Plucking greenery and berries;Wishing for a Christmas snow
— Rachel Heffington
Guthrie turned to see who his attacker was. And smiled when he caught her eye.He had the most devilishly wolfish look about him -- a mixture of impending payback with a snowball and something a wee bit more intimate, like a tackle in the snow. But he wouldn't. Not in front of his clansmen. Not when they weren't courting. At least, she hoped not.
— Terry Spear, A Highland Wolf Christmas
Christmas is about change. It’s a time we open our hearts before we open our presents.
— Toni Sorenson
MOLLY: You don't like New Years Eve? Are you insane? It's literally the best holiday ever. You just party all night and it doesn't matter what stupid stuff you do because the year's over and you get a brand new start in the morning.
— Hillary DePiano, New Year's Thieve
Why is a Christmas tree better than a man? Because it stays up, has cute balls, and looks good with the lights on!
— Emily Giffin, The One & Only
It still feels weird to spend money on Christmas trees. Back when Mom was alive, we’d go out “tree hunting.” That’s what she called it, anyway. I think other people might use the word “trespassing.
— Jenny Han, Fire with Fire
From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman. . . . Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-year-old son's incarceration as 'a short break before college?' A woman. Who remembered to include batteries at the bottom of each stocking? A woman. And who gets credit for pulling it all off?Santa.That's right. A man.
— Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
Later in the winter I'd tire of the snow, but Christmas snow was different.
— Marie Landry, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
I wonder whether the Christmas feeling has anything to do with the sixth sense. Perhaps we're a little more the angels at Christmas than we are during the rest of the year. And Christmas is about all the other senses. I can smell Christmas, I can taste Christmas, and I can see and hear it.
— Jostein Gaarder, Through a Glass, Darkly
Christmas is not only where you find it
—  it's what you make of it.
But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the out-door world, for he meant to light up the home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of in-door colour, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food: he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred,and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless--fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little fragrance, where the human faces had no sunshine in them,but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learnt the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time, with unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart.
— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street.
— Thomas Pynchon, V.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Every night is Christmas Eve on old East Main,Sailors and their sweethearts all agree.Neon signs of red and greenShine upon the friendly scene,Welcoming you in from off the sea.Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come true:Nickel beers that sparkle like champagne,Barmaids who all love to screw,All of them reminding youIt's Christmas Eve on old East Main.
— Thomas Pynchon, V.
Patsy had asked him if he had had adventures in Paris and he had truthfully answered no. It was a fact that he had done nothing; his father thought he had had a devil of a time and was afraid he had contracted a venereal disease, and he hadn't even had a woman; only one thing had happened to him, it was rather curious when you came to think of it, and he didn't just then quite know what to do about it: the bottom had fallen out of his world.
— W. Somerset Maugham
I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.
— George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2
Another Christmas PoemBlood Christmas, here again.Let us raise a loving cup:Peace on earth, goodwill to men,And make them do the washing-up.
— Wendy Cope
I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own.
— Sara Sheridan
Real ballplayers pass the stuffing by rolling it up in a ball and batting it across the table with a turkey leg.
— Tom Swyers
It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail. It was a clear bright day, but there was warmth in the sun. Danny shivered with an inner cold. He turned up the collar of his worn, greasy black overcoat.  This beat benny wouldn't pawn for a deuce, he thought.
— William S. Burroughs, Interzone
It’s the season. We share what we’ve got.
— Leland Dirks, Santa and the Border Collie
For all of life is Christmas, an eternal gift from God.
— James Behrens
Christmas is a state of mind.
— Lauren Myracle (Let It Snow), Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
They shared an image of the American Christmas--riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale.
— Alice Thomas Ellis, The Birds of the Air
This holiday season I learned the vue if presence over presents.
— JohnA Passaro
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the houseNot a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;The children were nestled all snug in their beds;While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.Away to the window I flew like a flash,Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,When what to my wondering eyes did appear,But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,With a little old driver so lively and quick,I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blixen!To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;So up to the housetop the coursers they flewWith the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roofThe prancing and pawing of each little hoof.As I drew in my head, and was turning around,Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;He had a broad face and a little round bellyThat shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;A wink of his eye and a twist of his headSoon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,And laying his finger aside of his nose,And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
— Clement C. Moore, The Night Before Christmas
I have always thought of Christmastime, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
The Christmas tree is a symbol of love, not money. There's a kind of glory to them when they're all lit up that exceeds anything all the money in the world could buy.
— Andy Rooney, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit
The real Santa Claus is at the mall.
— Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal
Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.
— Max Lucado, Celebrating Christmas with Jesus: An Advent Devotional
. . to cook well and with imagination you have to be in a cheerful and contented frame of mind, and thus inclined to be generous.
— Alice Thomas Ellis, The Inn at the Edge of the World
The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature. If some of our great decorated trees had been grown in a remote forest area with lights that came on every evening as it grew dark, the whole world would come to look at them and marvel at the mystery of their great beauty.
— Andy Rooney, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit
I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a a note on it saying, toys not included.
— Bernard Manning
Van Gogh on Christmas: And now we’re slowly heading towards winter, and many dread it, but Christmas is wonderful, it’s like the moss on the roofs and like the pine and the holly and the ivy in the snow. Isleworth, 10 November 1876
— Liesbeth Heenk, The 1-Hour Van Gogh Book: Complete Van Gogh Biography for Beginners
I love Christmas. Frosty the Snowman, peace on Earth and mangers, Salvation Army bell ringers and reindeer, the movie 'Meet Me in St. Louis,' office parties and cookies.
— Mo Rocca
Heart ring in the night
—  Lights shine from your eyes - Marble crunching the snow.
Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in life and take things for granted.
— Karli Perrin, The Gift
The whole concept of some stranger making his way down our chimney - not that we had one - suggested burglary more readily than generosity. Any Santa who tried it would have gotten a bullet in his holly, jolly keister.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Of Christmas Present
if psychoanalysis was late-19th-century secular Judaism's way of constructing spiritual meaning in a post-religious world and retail is the late 20th century's way of constructing meaning in a postreligious world, what does it mean that I'm impersonating the father of psychoanalysis in a store window to commemorate a religious holiday?
— David Rakoff, Fraud: Essays
What the hell?” Ian asked, holding his hands over the front of his Christmas briefs. Sara had ordered them from the Internet, and he'd worn them to please her. Too bad there hadn't been enough time for the underwear to meet with an unfortunate accident. A lot could be blamed on a washing machine.
— Rose Wynters, Voluptuous Vindication
It is now, at Advent, that I am given the chance to suspend all expectation...and instead to revel in the mystery.
— Jerusalem Jackson Greer, A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together
It's easy to forget that life is the greatest gift of all
— Karli Perrin, The Gift
The town is mobbed out with Saturday shoppers looking for Christmas bargains. You can almost breathe in the raw greed which hangs in the air like vapour. As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister.
— Irvine Welsh, Filth
I may plan to make Christ the center of Christmas, but when I wait until December to focus on celebrating His birthday, I become entangled in Christmas lights, holiday baking, and festive engagements, often wondering if I've experienced the illusive "true meaning" of Christmas.
— Ann Marie Stewart, Preparing My Heart for Advent
She was so busy doing Christmas, there wasn't time to experience Christmas.
— Lori Copeland, Unwrapping Christmas
A magic came out of your smileGold thread of gold threadStars illuminating the skyThereWhere in the mountain streamHealing waterTears of ice as a gift to me
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann
I long to look at my holiday season with eyes that see the Christ in Christmas.
— Ann Marie Stewart, Preparing My Heart for Advent
You know what? From now on, I think I’m going to call you Mister Christmas.
— Fern Michaels, Secret Santa
The thing I love most about Advent is the heartbreak. The utter and complete heartbreak.
— Jerusalem Jackson Greer, A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together
Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy artillery, these coarse, hardened soldiers who were dispirited by their lack of ammunition and tormented by vermin and hunger had all understood at once that what they needed more than anything in the world was not bread, not bandages, not ammunition, but these tiny branches twined with useless tinsel, these orphanage toys.
— Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
She blinked once, then twice, and yet again, sure what she viewed was just another part of this fantasy world that she had stepped into when her feet touched the green grass of Ireland.
— Fern Michaels, Secret Santa
This is difficult to comprehend when one pauses to consider the character of Christ. Admittedly there have been many false caricatures of this Person, but an unbiased look at His life quickly reveals an individual of enormous compassion and incredible integrity.
— W. Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23
Paying twenty-five dollars for me was your mistake, ma’am. I’m not worth more than fifteen.
— Margaret Brownley, A Pioneer Christmas Collection
Christmas is a time of sharing, and joy and grace. There's no better time to entertain family and friends than now.
— Shelley Shepard Gray, Grace
She stared at the castle. She had actually been summoned to a castle. A week before Christmas.
— Fern Michaels, Secret Santa
In a season like this,I wouldn't be held by the snow.With all these feelings of bliss,I've to put aside my egoAnd step out to let you know,With you, I'm well pleasedAnd the love you show,Is to me the bee's knees.
— Emmanuel Aghado, 101 Short Love Poems
Tizzy squawked, and he bounced like a ball on the floor. “I completely forgot; Santa said something more.He said that a book gives your very thoughts wings,That carry you off to see wonderful things,That lift you aloft, throughout time, throughout spaceTo every era and every place!
— Dorothea Jensen, Tizzy, the Christmas Shelf Elf
Santa was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. The after-action report was signed by the field commander, the director of operations, the secretary of the Office of Sidhe Affairs, and the chief battle-mage. Janus had signed it — and Janus’s word could be counted upon for anything he chose to put his name to. Old Saint Nicholas, the Sidhe Lord of the Yuletide, was as dead as a door-nail.It didn’t stick.
— Chris Lester, A Lightbringer Carol
Near the land of the convertible moon
—  there's a mystical star - the star of promise.
I was that kind of tired you feel when you’ve spent a day in a hospital while a loved one undergoes surgery and comes through all right, the loved one, of course, being myself, and Christmas being the surgical procedure.
— Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise
Miracles happen on Christmas, Pat. Everybody knows that shit.
— Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook
It is not a Christmas tree!" said the King, so firmly that all the girls stopped jumping about. "This is a house of mourning. It is nothing more than a tree. I thought it would look nice. Inside. That is all.
— Heather Dixon, Entwined
Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.
— Dale Evans Rogers
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine's Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
Calvin: Dear Santa, before I submit life to your scrutiny, I demand to know who made YOU the matter of my fate?! Who are YOU to question my behavior, HUH??? What gives you the right?! Hobbes: Santa makes the toys, so he gets to decide who to give them to.Calvin: Oh.
— Bill Watterson, It's a Magical World: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
I don't want Christmas season to end, because it's the only time I can legitimately indulge in on particular addiction: glitter.
— Eloisa James, Paris in Love
She may not be able to teach the baby how to cook, but she could teach the child how to shoot a gun and how to disarm a man when being attacked with a knife. You never knew when those things could come in handy.
— Kathleen Brooks, Secret Santa
Do you need help with anything?" he asked with a wicked arched brow. "Maybe with cookies for Santa."Scowling because no one was here but us, I said, "You're a bit late for that. Santa already came."He hadn't moved, but I knew better than to think he would. Flynn was a pro at filling the bubble air space that was meant to be private and personal. "And were you a good girl?" he asked.Awkwardly folding my arms over my chest, I said, "Not sure, I haven't checked. But you needn't look. We all know you are all bad."Laughing, he said, "Yeah, well, there are other things worth unwrapping."Grinding my teeth, I asked, "What, you didn't get your Ho, Ho, Ho, last night?"Tossing back another full belly laugh, he said, "You know you're kind of funny when you want to be.
— Shannon Dermott, Beg for Mercy
Advent creates people, new people.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
She felt like a woman on fire. Would it be bad to have sex with Santa in the closet?
— Kathleen Brooks, Secret Santa
You know if the U.S. Government wanted to boost the economy there's a simple solution make Black Friday the refund date for your state and federal taxes
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Return to Stantasyland
Goodwill to all.' I know it's techinically 'goodwill to all men,' but in my mind, I drop the 'men' because that feels segregationist/elitist/sexist/generally bad ist. Goodwill shouldn't be just for men. It should also apply to women and children, and all animals, even the yucky ones like subway rats. I'd even extend the goodwill not just to living creatures but to the dearly departed, and if we include them, we might as well include the undead, those supposedly mythic beings like vampires, and if they're in, then so are elves, fairies, and gnomes. Heck, since we're already being so generous in our big group hug, why not also embrace those supposedly inanimate objects like dolls and stuffed animals. I'm sure Santa would agree. 'Goodwill to all.
— Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
Christmas makes me schmaltzy. I'm proud to be level-headed, even a little tough most of the time. But once a year I like to believe that peace on earth may be possible and calories don't count.
— Sue Merrell, One Shoe Off
Dave put a lot of thought into picking out the books his dad would like least.
— Theric Jepson, Byuck
Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room...An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter--extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone--beauty is born.
— Geoffrey O'Brien, Sonata for Jukebox: An Autobiography of My Ears
I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn’t go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god’s knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don’t share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death.
— Marcus Speh, A Metazen Christmas
That’s what I always wanted to know. Why would some fella be willing to do something generous for a kid he doesn’t even know?” Rodney asked. “Have to say I’m surprised, Mr. Burton. Of all the people on the face of the earth,” he said, his voice softening, “I figured if anyone knew the answer to that one, it’d be you.
— Kenny Rogers, Christmas in Canaan
Hugh refused to leave the scene of the action. He seated himself on the top stair in the hall, banged his head against the railing a few times, just by way of uncorking the vials of his wrath, and then subsided into gloomy silence, waiting to declare war if more “first girl babies” were thrust upon a family already surfeited with that unnecessary article.
— Kate Douglas Wiggin, The Bird's Christmas Carol
The other houses in the neighborhood had Christmas lights up and trees visible in their windows, but not Shae's. She and I were the only ones who didn't care anymore, and I liked that about her.
— Teresa Lo, The Other Side: a Collection of Short Stories
And so this is Christmas...what have you done?
— John Lennon
Instead of protesting and cursing others because they write "X-Mas" instead of "Christmas"; try being Christmas. Live Christmas. Breathe Christmas. Act Christmas. Speak Christmas. Reflect Christmas. Listen and feel ChristmasChrist doesn't care how you write Christmas; he cares how you live Christmas all year long.
— Sandra Chami Kassis
•Zuzu Bailey: Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings. •George Bailey: That's right, that's right. •George Bailey: Attaboy, Clarence.
— It's a Wonderful Life
He sees me when I'm lying. He hears me when I flirt.
— Candace Jane Kringle, North Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus
Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight. It will not have its intended effect until we feel desperately the need for a Savior.
— John Piper
Tapping a little bell, I leaned on the desk and turned to look at a small, traditionally decorated Christmas tree on a table near the entranceway. It was complete with shiny, egg-fragile bulbs; miniature candy canes; flat, laughing Santas with arms wide; a star on top nodding awkwardly against the delicate shoulder of an upper branch; and colored lights that bloomed out of flower-shaped sockets. For some reason this seemed to me a sorry little piece.
— Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
Christmas ribbons decked every crystal ball knocker on every sparkling door as far as the eye could see. Through the snowy streets of the Veiled Village, Echoes and Sounds rushed to and fro, their shimmering clothes looking like pouring rain or ice or waves. Before them multi-colored parcels fluttered like strange birds carried on small see-through wings, and every once in a while two parcels would collide and rain down gifts.
— Tal Boldo
I pat the brand new twenty-seven inch Macintosh computers Mr. Foley brought us. 'These boxes alone should make both of us scream like it's Christmas morning! Snap out of it. Santa came! Now we get to play with all of our toys!
— Anne Eliot
The nurses did their best to spruce up the antiseptic corridors but the smell of pine boughs was overpowered by Pine Sol and no one paused beneath the mistletoe on the contagious ward.
— Robert Zverina, BUZZ [ebook]
After all, Christmastide is the time of year for warming brandies, for assertive burgundies and meaty Medoc wines, and for gladsome whiskies. And an Islay malt: well, this is the octave of St Andrew, and you will doubtless recall that he is not only the patron saint of Alba, of Scotland, but was also a fisherman. How better to toast my favorite apostle (he being all the things I personally am not, starting with humble and self-effacing) than with the sea-salty dram of an Islay whisky?
— Markham Shaw Pyle
Later the place was as deserted as Malcolm Muggeridge's Christmas party of fellow intellectuals.
— William Donaldson
If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.
— Shelby Foote
Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time.
— Nalo Hopkinson, Sister Mine
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey
One minute was enough, Tyler said, "A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.
— Michael J. Fox
I like her," Brad said, chuckling."For a Red Sox tee shirt wearing woman I guess she's okay," Jason grumbled."Does no one care that she just manhandled me?" Trevor demanded, facing the men who should be properly outraged on his behalf.Jason snorted. "A s long as she brings me food she can bitch slap you and call you spanky."Trevor narrowed his eyes on the men who dared laugh at his pain.Betraying bastards.
— R.L. Mathewson, Perfection
Can we get back to work now?" Haley asked, sounding innocent, but Zoe didn't miss the woman's lips twitchingor the humor sparkling in her eyes. Something told her that this woman truly enjoyed torturing her husband."For god sake's, my little grasshopper, you love the Yankees more than I do! What the hell is going on?" He turned accusing eyes on Zoe. "How dare you brainwash my wife?" he hissed."A re you going to leave so that we can get some work done?" Haley demanded, turning her attention to the computer."No," he said stubbornly, folding his arms over his chest, glaring at them."Buttercream frosting," Haley said softly, never taking her eyes away from her computer screen.Jason licked his lips as he looked his pregnant wife over hungrily. "Tonight?" he croaked out."If you're good," Haley said, with a small shrug. "But you have to leave-""Bye," Jason said quickly, cutting her off and rushing out of the trailer just as fast as he came.
— R.L. Mathewson, Perfection
Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.
— Lauren Oliver, Requiem
You missed breakfast," Jason announced as Trevor stepped into the large busy kitchen filled with Bradfords and food."That's fine. I'm not really hungry," he said, barely aware or caring that all activity in the busy kitchen suddenly stopped as every Bradford in the room, even one year old Cole stopped trying to climb onto the counter to get at the large platter of cookies his mother made to stare at him in disbelief.
— R.L. Mathewson, Perfection
Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.
— Bob Marley
It took a lot of work to be perfect. If you didn’t want to break a sweat, there was no point in even bothering.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Do it again.Play it again. Sing it again. Read it again. Write it again. Sketch it again. Rehearse it again. Run it again. Try it 
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
In a cruel and imperfect world, she was living proof that God could still create perfection.
— Rex Reed
If I can do things right, I don't see why everyone else can't.
— Courtney Summers, Cracked Up to Be
You knew? How the hell did you know?" he demanded,wondering which bastard in his family had ratted his assout."It wasn't too hard to figure out, Trevor," she murmured, looking totally enthralled with what she was doing."What the hell does that mean?" He'd been careful, very careful. He'd neverread anything in front of her, neverwrote anything more than his name or a word or two in her presence. There wasno way she could have found out withoutone of his interfering relatives clueing her in."Who the hell told you?" Zoe rolled her eyes even as she leaned over to press a quick kiss on his lips, which made him slightly happy, but not enough to forget that he needed to kill one of his relatives."You never read anything around me. Youthink you tricked me into reading for you. Then there was the time we ran out of condoms and you flipped out because you thought there was supposed to be 42 condoms in the box of 24.""Would it have killed them to put a few extra condoms in the box so that you could have seen to my needs?" he asked, remembering that damn night and trying not to wince. Okay, so maybe he gave himself away...just a little.
— R.L. Mathewson, Perfection
The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS.
— Winston S. Churchill
There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
You say that I'm nobody, and you agree that nobody's perfect.Based on logic, I'm a perfect person according to your opinion.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I’m not perfect. And I don’t have to be. I can figure it out as I go, and as long as I do the best I can, it’s okay if I still screw up.
— Melissa Darnell, Covet
No person is completely wicked, just as no person is perfect. We are all grey
— Sweety Shinde, Arjun: Without a Doubt