Merriment

Merriment is a state of enjoyable exuberance or playful fun.

Quotes

• As Tammie glow'red, amazed and curious,
  The mirth and fun grew fast and furious.
  • Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter (1793).

• Go then merrily to Heaven.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II, Section 3. Memb. 1.

• Some credit in being jolly.
  • Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), Chapter V.

• Hugh laughed again, and with such thorough abandonment to his mad humour, that his limbs seemed dislocated, and his whole frame in danger of tumbling to pieces; but Mr Tappertit, so far from receiving this extreme merriment with any irritation, was pleased to regard it with the utmost favour, and even to join in it, so far as one of his gravity and station could, with any regard to that decency and decorum which men in high places are expected to maintain.
  • Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1841).

• Forward and frolic glee was there,
  The will to do, the soul to dare.
  • Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto I, Stanza 21.

• What should a man do but be merry?
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 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?
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act II, scene 4, line 305.

• As 'tis ever common
  That men are merriest when they are from home.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act I, scene 2, line 271.

• And, if you can be merry then, I'll say
  A man may weep upon his wedding day.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Prologue, line 31.

• But a merrier man,
  Within the limit of becoming mirth,
  I never spent an hour's talk withal.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act II, scene 1, line 66.

• Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 867.

• Be large in mirth; anon we'll drink a measure
  The table round.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 4, line 11.

• 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, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 1, line 80.

• As merry as the day is long.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act II, scene 1, line 45.

• You have a merry heart.
  Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act II, scene 1, line 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.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act II, scene 1, line 345.

• I am not merry; but I do beguile
  The thing I am by seeming otherwise.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act II, scene 1, line 123.

• And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
  Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Induction, scene 2, line 137.

• Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
  Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act V, scene 1, line 93.

• When every room
  Hath blaz'd with lights and brayed with minstrelsy.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act II, scene 2, line 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.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 3, line 132.

• And let's be red with mirth.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 54.

• The glad circle round them yield their souls
  To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 403.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 511-12.

• An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow.
  • Richard Baxter, Self Denial.

• Plus on est de fous, plus on rit.
  • The more fools the more one laughs.
  • Florent Carton Dancourt, Maison de Campagne, scene 11.

• A very merry, dancing, drinking,
  Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.
  • John Dryden, The Secular Masque, line 40.

• And mo the merier is a Prouerbe eke.
  • George Gascoigne, Works. Ed. by Hazlitt. I. 64. (The more the merrier.) Heywood, Proverbes, Part II, Chapter VII. Beaumont and John Fletcher, Scornful Lady, I. 1. Henry Parrott, The Sea Voyage, I. 2. Given credit in Brydges, Censura Literaria, Volume III, p. 337. King James I., according to the Westminster Gazette.

• Ride si sapis.
  • Be merry if you are wise.
  • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), II. 41. 1.

• Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
  To live with her, and live with thee,
  In unreprov'd pleasures free.
  • John Milton, L'Allegro, line 38.

• A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.
  • Proverbs, XVII. 22.

• 'Tis merry in hall
  Where beards wag all.
  • Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, August's Abstract. Adam Davie, Life of Alexander (About 1312). In Warton's History of English Poetry, Volume II, p. 10. Quoted by Ben Jonson, Masque of Christmas.