New Revised Standard Version
A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.

Contemporary English Version
If you are cheerful, you feel good; if you are sad, you hurt all over.

New American Bible
A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones.

Douay-Rheims Bible
A joyful mind maketh age flourishing: a sorrowful spirit drieth up the bones.

A joyful mind maketh age flourishing: a sorrowful spirit drieth up the bones.

merry

Proverbs 12:25 Grief in the heart of a man shall bring him low, but with a good word he shall be made glad.

Proverbs 15:13 A glad heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by grief of mind the spirit is cast down.

Proverbs 18:14 The spirit of a man upholdeth his infirmity: but a spirit that is easily angered, who can bear?

Ecclesiastes 9:7-9 Go then, and eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with gladness: because thy works please God. . . .

Romans 5:2-5 By whom also we have access through faith into this grace wherein we stand: and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God. . . .

like a medicine

Psalm 22:15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue hath cleaved to my jaws: and thou hast brought me down into the dust of death.

Psalm 32:3,4 Because I was silent my bones grew old; whilst I cried out all the day long. . . .

Psalm 102:3-5 For my days are vanished like smoke, and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire. . . .

2 Corinthians 2:7 So that on the contrary, you should rather forgive him and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.

2 Corinthians 7:10 For the sorrow that is according to God worketh penance, steadfast unto salvation: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.