Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Merriment
An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow.
Baxter—Self Denial.
As Tammie glow’red, amazed and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious.
Burns—Tam o’ Shanter.
Go then merrily to Heaven.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. II. Sec. 3. Memb. 1.
Plus on est de fous, plus on rit.
The more fools the more one laughs.
Dancourt—Maison de Campagne. Sc. 11.
Some credit in being jolly.
Dickens—Martin Chuzzlewit. Ch. V.
A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.
Dryden—The Secular Masque. L. 40.
And mo the merier is a Prouerbe eke.
Gascoigne—Works. Ed. by Hazlitt. I. 64. (The more the merrier.) Heywood—Proverbes. Pt. II. Ch. VII. Beaumont and Fletcher—Scornful Lady. I. 1. Henry Parrott—The Sea Voyage. I. 2. Given credit in Brydges—Censura Literaria. Vol. III. P. 337. King James I., according to the Westminster Gazette.
Ride si sapis.
Be merry if you are wise.
Martial—Epigrams. II. 41. 1.
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprov’d pleasures free.
Milton—L’Allegro. L. 38.
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.
Proverbs. XVII. 22.
Forward and frolic glee was there,
The will to do, the soul to dare.
Scott—Lady of the Lake. Canto I. St. 21.
What should a man do but be merry?
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 131.
Hostess, clap to the doors; watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you! What, shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act II. Sc. 4. L. 305.
As ’tis ever common
That men are merriest when they are from home.
Henry V. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 271.
And, if you can be merry then, I’ll say
A man may weep upon his wedding day.
Henry VIII. Prologue. L. 31.
But a merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour’s talk withal.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 66.
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 867.
Be large in mirth; anon we’ll drink a measure
The table round.
Macbeth. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 11.
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Merchant of Venice. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 80.
As merry as the day is long.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 45.
You have a merry heart.
Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 323.
Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for out of question, you were born in a merry hour.
No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that I was born.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 345.
I am not merry; but I do beguile
The thing I am by seeming otherwise.
Othello. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 123.
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
Taming of the Shrew. Induction. Sc. 2. L. 137.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Tempest. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 93.
When every room
Hath blaz’d with lights and brayed with minstrelsy.
Timon of Athens. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 169.
Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.
Winter’s Tale. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 132.
And let’s be red with mirth.
Winter’s Tale. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 54.
The glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.
Thomson—The Seasons. Summer. L. 403.
’Tis merry in hall
Where beards wag all.
Tusser—Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. August’s Abstract. Adam Davie—Life of Alexander. (About 1312). In Warton’s—History of English Poetry. Vol. II. P. 10. Quoted by Ben Jonson—Masque of Christmas.