Mirth is God's medicine. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

Mirth and motion prolong life. [ Proverb ]

I remember, I remember
How my childhood fleeted by, -
The mirth of its December,
And the warmth of its July. [ Praed ]

In the time of mirth take heed. [ Proverb ]

Mirth and mischief are two things. [ Proverb ]

The heart of childhood is all mirth. [ Keble ]

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

I have a dog of Blenheim birth.
With fine long ears and full of mirth;
And sometimes, running over the plain,
He tumbles on his nose:
But quickly jumping up again
Like lightning on he goes! [ Ruskin ]

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 ]

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. [ William Shakespeare ]

Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt;
And every grin so merry, draws one out. [ Dr. Wolcot or Peter Pindar? ]

Mustard is good sauce, but mirth is better. [ Proverb ]

Sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide
To light up worlds or wake an insect's mirth. [ Keble ]

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. [ William Shakespeare ]

Frame your mind to mirth and merriment.
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life. [ William Shakespeare ]

Mirth itself is too often but melancholy in disguise. [ Leigh Hunt ]

Gall in mirth is an ill mixture, and sometimes truth is bitter. [ Proverb ]

There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy. [ Hood ]

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

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

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

Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. [ Bible ]

There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly. [ Addison ]

Luxury is an enticing pleasure, a bastard mirth, which hath honey in her mouth, gall in her heart, and a sting in her tail. [ Victor Hugo ]

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 ]

Since time is not a person we can overtake when he is past, let us honour him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. [ Chesterfield ]

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 ]

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 ]

Wise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind is to cure melancholy by madness. [ Charron ]

A companion that feasts the company with wit and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man; and let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. [ Izaak Walton ]

We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding. [ Goethe ]

From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth; he has twice or thrice cut Cupid's bowstring, 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. [ William 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 ]

The world produces for every pint of honey a gallon of gall, for every dram of pleasure a pound of pain, for every inch of mirth an ell of moan; and as the ivy twines around the oak, so does misery and misfortune encompass the happy man. Felicity, pure and unalloyed felicity, is not a plant of earthly growth: her gardens are the skies. [ Robert Burton ]

Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. [ E. P. Whipple ]

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 dark 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 ]