C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Mirth

Mirth is God’s medicine.

Henry Ward Beecher.

Mirth itself is too often but melancholy in disguise.

Leigh Hunt.

Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt;
And ev’ry grin so merry, draws one out.

Dr. Wolcot.

Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above or below him are serious.

Addison.

Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.

Henry Ward Beecher.

Fun gives you a forcible hug, and shakes laughter out of you, whether you will or no.

Garrick.

Frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

Shakespeare.

Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, most earnest humor.

E. P. Whipple.

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity,
Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles.

Milton.

Blessed be mirthfulness! It is one of the renovators of the world. Men will let you abuse them if only you will make them laugh.

Henry Ward Beecher.

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.

Izaak Walton.

Harmless mirth is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirit; wherefore jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in quantity, quality or season.

Fuller.

The greatness that would make us grave,
Is but an empty thing.
What more than mirth would mortals have?
The cheerful man’s a king.

Bickerstaff.

Let me play the fool
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Shakespeare.

A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour’s talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest.

Shakespeare.

There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven’t any myself, but I do like it in others. O, we need it! We need all the counterweights we can muster to balance the sad relations of life. God has made many sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from them?

Haliburton.

From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth; he has twice or thrice cut Cupid’s bow-string, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him: he hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks.

Shakespeare.

Mirth is God’s medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,—all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs.

Beecher.

Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it out. It is the blessed spirit that God has set in the mind to dust it, to enliven its dart places, and to drive asceticism, like a foul fiend, out at the back door. It is just as good, in its place, as conscience or veneration. Praying can no more be made a substitute for smiling than smiling can for praying.

Beecher.

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