Mirth Quotes - Page 3

• Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.

  Edith Wharton

  Half, Life Is, Trouble

  Edith Wharton (2013). “House of Mirth and the Age of Innocence”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

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• She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.

  Edith Wharton

  Tolerance, Scene

  Edith Wharton (2015). “The House of Mirth”, p.32, Xist Publishing

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• 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

  Heart, Thinking, Sound

  'Much Ado About Nothing' (1598-9) act 3, sc. 2, l. [12]

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• I live in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more when he laughs, it adds some thing to his fragment of life.

  Laurence Sterne

  Men, Ill Health, Evil

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• I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth,
  forgone all custom of exercise.

  William Shakespeare

  Exercise, Melancholy, Important Hamlet

  William Shakespeare, Alan Durband (1987). “Hamlet”, p.116, Nelson Thornes

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• I am very fond of Edith Wharton. She's quite high brow but also a great storyteller. My favorite is 'The House of Mirth.' I also like 'The Reef.

  Ken Follett

  House, My Favorite, Brows

  "Ken Follett: Prolific writer, fan of 19th-century novels". Interview by Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. September 23, 2012.

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• What is our life? A play of passion. Our mirth the music of division. Our mother's wombs the tyring houses be, Where we are drest for this short Comedy.

  Walter Raleigh

  Life, Mother, Passion

  Sir Walter Raleigh (1965). “Sir Walter Raleigh: Selected Prose and Poetry”

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• February... Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen mountains.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Sea, Heaven, Mountain

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1853). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.612

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• I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious.

  Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

  Wise, Hero, Men

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• We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

  James Thurber

  Laughter, War, Home

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• This Universe is a wild revel of atoms, men, and stars, each one a Soul of Light and Mirth, horsed on Eternity.

  Aleister Crowley

  Stars, Men, Light

  Aleister Crowley (1975). “The Commentaries of AL: Being the Equinox Volume V, No. 1”, Weiser Books

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• These are the things I prize And hold of dearest worth: Light of the sapphire skies, Peace of the silent hills, Shelter of the forests, comfort of the grass, Music of birds, murmur of little rills, Shadows of cloud that swiftly pass, And, after showers, The smell of flowers And of the good brown earth,- And best of all, along the way, friendship and mirth.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Friendship, Peace, Flower

  Henry Van Dyke, “God Of The Open Air”

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• Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Beautiful, Humble, Humor

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• Books are never out of humour; never envious or jealous, they answer all questions with readiness; ... they teach us how to live and how to die; they dispel melancholy by their mirth, and amuse by their wit; they prepare the soul to suffer everything and desire nothing; they introduce us to ourselves.

  Holbrook Jackson

  Book, Jealous, Soul

  Holbrook Jackson (1950). “The Anatomy of Bibliomania”, p.85, University of Illinois Press

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• Laugh often friends tho' passing years bring, sometimes, smiles and, sometimes, tears, for mirth forever warms and cheers. Laugh often!

  John McLeod

  Cheer, Laughter, Years

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• What are you? The voice came from nowhere. It was in the room. It was outside. It was in Magnus's head. "A warlock," Magnus answered. "And what are you?" We are many. "Please do not say you are a legion. Someone's taken that." Do you make mirth from mundane scriptures, warlock? "Just breaking the ice

  Cassandra Clare

  Taken, Ice, Rooms

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• Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! On for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth.

  John Keats

  Song, Purple, Mouths

  'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820) st. 2

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• When thou dost tell another's jest, therein Omit the oaths, which true wit cannot need; Pick out of tales the mirth, but not the sin.

  George Herbert

  Needs, Sin, Tales

  George Herbert (1871). “The English poems of George Herbert, together with his collection of proverbs entitled Jacula prudentum”, p.5

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• Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sell eternity to get a toy? For one grape who will the vine destroy?

  William Shakespeare

  Vines, Toys, Eternity

  'The Rape Of Lucrece' (1594) l. 213

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• What is now the foliage moving?
  Air is still, and hush'd the breeze,
  Sultriness, this fullness loving,
  Through the thicket, from the trees.
  Now the eye at once gleams brightly,
  See! the infant band with mirth
  Moves and dances nimbly, lightly,
  As the morning gave it birth,
  Flutt'ring two and two o'er earth.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Morning, Spring, Moving

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “May”

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• And fairy month of waking mirth
  From whom our joys ensue
  Thou early gladder of the earth
  Thrice welcome here anew
  With thee the bud unfolds to leaves
  The grass greens on the lea
  And flowers their tender boon receives
  To bloom and smile with thee.

  John Clare

  Spring, Flower, Joy

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• To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans; coy looks, with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth

  William Shakespeare

  Love You, Heart, Looks

  William Shakespeare (1839). “The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere: Comedies / ... Shakspere”, p.19

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• I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.

  Joseph Addison

  Optimism, Mind, Pessimism

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.103

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• Glory to God in highest heaven, Who unto man His Son hath given; While angels sing with tender mirth, A glad new year to all the earth.

  Martin Luther

  New Year, Spiritual, Angel

  Martin Luther, “From Heaven Above To Earth I Come”

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• Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.

  John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

  Laughter, Military, Clouds

  In K. Rhys More Poems from the Forces (1943) "High Flight"

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