Top 100 Josh Billings Quotes
#1. The happiest time in a man's life is when he is in the red hot pursuit of a dollar with a reasonable prospect of overtaking it.
Josh Billings
#2. Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it.
Josh Billings
#3. Silence is said to be golden, but the best fools the world has ever produced had nothing to say on the subject
Josh Billings
#4. It's a wise man who profits by his own experience, but it's a good deal wiser one who lets the rattlesnake bite the other fellow.
Josh Billings
#5. Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.
Josh Billings
#6. Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.
Josh Billings
#7. It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowin' so derned much that ain't so.
Josh Billings
#8. Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones.
Josh Billings
#9. There is gravity in wisdom, but no particular wisdom in gravity.
Josh Billings
#10. Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.
Josh Billings
#11. A learned fool is one who has read everything and simply remembered it.
Josh Billings
#12. Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.
Josh Billings
#13. Music wasn't made to make us wise, but better natured.
Josh Billings
#15. When a young man begins to go down hill everything seems to be greased for the occasion.
Josh Billings
#17. As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth - hear both sides and believe neither.
Josh Billings
#18. If the world despises a hypocrite, what must they think of him in heaven?
Josh Billings
#19. Silence is one of the hardest kind of arguments to refute. There is no good substitute for wisdom; but silence is the best that has yet been discovered.
Josh Billings
#20. The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.
Josh Billings
#21. There is not a whole lot of fun in medicine but there is a whole lot of medicine in fun.
Josh Billings
#23. It ain't no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lie there and grunt is.
Josh Billings
#24. I don't never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks' straight is what bothers me.
Josh Billings
#25. Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
Josh Billings
#26. Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.
Josh Billings
#27. When a man gets talking about himself, he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.
Josh Billings
#28. Selfish people, with no heart to speak of, have the best time of it.
Josh Billings
#29. It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.
Josh Billings
#30. The man who gets bit twice by the same dog is better adapted for that kind of business than any other.
Josh Billings
#32. Every man should know something of law; if he knows enough to keep out of it, he is a pretty good lawyer.
Josh Billings
#33. Men who have much to say use the fewest words.
Josh Billings
#34. Habits are like the wrinkles on a man's brow; if you will smooth out the one, I will smooth out the other.
Josh Billings
#36. Pity costs nothing, and it ain't worth nothing.
Josh Billings
#37. Hunting after happiness is like hunting after a lost sheep in the wilderness
when you find it, the chances are that it is a skeleton.
Josh Billings
#38. People travel to learn; most of them before they start should learn to travel.
Josh Billings
#39. Man is my brother, and I am nearer related to him through his vices than I am through his virtue.
Josh Billings
#40. One legged chickens, I know, are the least apt to scratch a garden.
Josh Billings
#41. Advice can be like cod liver oil, easy enough to administer but not so pleasant to take for anybody.
Josh Billings
#42. Don't ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.
Josh Billings
#43. Wisdom that don't make us happier ain't worth plowing for.
Josh Billings
#44. It is a statistical fact that the wicked work harder to reach hell than the righteous do to enter heaven
Josh Billings
#46. Menny think tha luv their husbands almost tew deth, when in fack, tha are only jealous ov them.
Josh Billings
#47. I haven't got as much money as some folks, but I've got as much impudence as any of them, and that's the next thing to money.
Josh Billings
#48. You cannot analyze a kiss any more than you can dissect the fragrance of flowers.
Josh Billings
#49. Despatch is taking time by the ears; hurry is taking it by the end of the tail.
Josh Billings
#50. Be like a postage stamp - stick to one thing until you get there.
Josh Billings
#51. Our continual desire for praise ought to convince us of our mortality, if nothing else will.
Josh Billings
#52. If animals had reason, they would act just as ridiculous as we menfolks do.
Josh Billings
#54. Politeness is better than logic. You can often persuade when you cannot convince.
Josh Billings
#55. To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
Josh Billings
#56. Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Josh Billings
#57. It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.
Josh Billings
#58. There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't.
Josh Billings
#59. If men were stubborn just in proportion as they were right, stubbornness would take her seat among the virtues; but men are generally stubborn just in proportion as they are ignorant and wrong.
Josh Billings
#60. The nearest we can come to) perfect happiness is to cheat ourselves with the belief that we have got it.
Josh Billings
#61. Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,
to be intelligently simple.
Josh Billings
#62. Early genius, like early cabbage, does not head well.
Josh Billings
#63. The very thing that men think they have got the most of, they have got the least of; and that is judgment.
Josh Billings
#64. If a man is right, he can't be too radical; if he is wrong, he can't be too conservative.
Josh Billings
#65. There never yet was a mother who taught her child to be an infidel.
Josh Billings
#66. The devil is the father of lies, but he neglected to patent the idea, and the business now suffers from competition.
Josh Billings
#67. When a man makes up his mind to become a rascal, he should examine himself closely and see if he isn't better constructed for a fool.
Josh Billings
#69. Man isn't a fool for his ignorance, but rather for believing things that are wrong.
Josh Billings
#70. The fools in this world make about as much trouble as the wicked do.
Josh Billings
#71. If there was no faith there would be no living in this world.
Josh Billings
#72. Everybody in this world wants watching, but nobody more than ourselves.
Josh Billings
#73. As a general thing, an individual who is neat in his person is neat in his morals.
Josh Billings
#74. Unless we put heart and soul into our labor we but brutify our actions.
Josh Billings
#75. I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
Josh Billings
#76. Pride seems to be equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem to have it just alike.
Josh Billings
#77. I never knew a man troubled with melancholy, who had plenty to do, and did it.
Josh Billings
#78. Fortune is like a coquette; if you don't run after her, she will run after you.
Josh Billings
#79. If mankind were only just what they pretend to be, the problem of the millennium would be immediately solved.
Josh Billings
#80. A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe.
Josh Billings
#81. Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.
Josh Billings
#82. Genuine laughing is the vent of the soul, the nostrils of the heart, and just as necessary for health and happiness as spring water is for a trout.
Josh Billings
#83. Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.
Josh Billings
#84. Take the humbug out of this world, and you haven't much left to do business with.
Josh Billings
#85. Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.
Josh Billings
#86. Building air castles is a harmless business as long as you don't attempt to live in them.
Josh Billings
#87. Fools carry their daggers in their open mouths.
Josh Billings
#88. Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.
Josh Billings
#89. A man running for office puts me in mind of a dog that's lost-he smells everybody he meets, and wags himself all over.
Josh Billings
#90. Keep a cow, and the milk won't have to be watered but once.
Josh Billings
#91. Love is said to be blind, but I know some fellows in love who can see twice as much in their sweethearts as I do.
Josh Billings
#92. People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.
Josh Billings
#93. Genius after all ain't anything more then elegant common sense.
Josh Billings
#94. Wise men have but few confidants, and cunning ones none.
Josh Billings
#95. Occasions are rare; and those, who know how to seize upon them, are rarer.
Josh Billings
#96. As in a game of cards, so in the game of life, we must play what is dealt to us, and the glory consists, not so much in winning as in playing a poor hand well.
Josh Billings
#97. Newfoundland dogs are good to save children from drowning, but you must have a pond of water handy and a child, or else there will be no profit in boarding a Newfoundland.
Josh Billings
#98. But why discourse Upon the Virtues of the Horse? They are too numerous to tell Save when you have a Horse to Sell.
Josh Billings
#99. It ain't often that a man's reputation outlasts his money.
Josh Billings
#100. There's a lot of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.
Josh Billings
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