“and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.”

“there were more children there than Scrooge in his agitated mind could count, and unlike the celebrated poem, not every forty children were acting as one, but every child was acting as forty.”

“Conduct! Is conduct everything? One may conduct oneself excellently, and yet break one's heart.”

“If every single man and woman, child and baby, acts and conducts itself in a known pattern and breaks no walls and differs with no one and experiments in no way and is not sick and does not endanger the ease and peace of mind or steady unbroken flow of the town, then that unit can disappear and never be heard of.”

“By then she was the only one of her seven siblings without a child and quickly approaching thirty (which is like forty when you adjust for inflation since 1980).”

“Respect for right conduct is felt by every body.”