Josh Billings Quotes

To enjoy a good reputation, give publicly, and steal privately.

When good-natured people leave us we look forward with extra pleasure to their return.

Prejudice is a house-plant which is very apt to wilt if you take it out-of-doors among folks.

It AIN'T so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so.

We should make virtue our master, not our servant.

I never had a man come to me for advice yet, but what I soon discovered that he thought more of his own opinion than he did of mine.

Music wasn't made to make us wise, but better natured.

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.

Despatch is taking time by the ears; hurry is taking it by the end of the tail.

Ignorance is the wet-nurse of prejudice.

[Science is] the literature of truth.

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.

The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.

Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.

Ambition is like hunger; it obeys no law but its appetite

A slander is like a hornet; if you cannot kill it dead at the first blow, better not to strike at it.

If you would make yourself agreeable wherever you go, listen to the grievances of others but never relate your own.

Silence is a still noise.

Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been getting a little lower ever since.

It is a great art to be superior to others without letting them know it.

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.

Error will slip through a crack, while truth will stick in a doorway.

Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.

The less we know the more we suspect

Experience is a school where a man learns what a big fool he has been.

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.

The man who ain't got an enemy is really poor.

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply

Genius after all ain't anything more then elegant common sense.

Most everyone seems willing to be a fool himself, but he can't bear to have anyone else one.

It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowin' so derned much that ain't so.

The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.

Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.

It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.

When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.

You can reach stupidity only with a cannon ball.

Don't have any more secrets than you can keep yourself.

As a general thing, an individual who is neat in his person is neat in his morals.

I never knew a man troubled with melancholy, who had plenty to do, and did it.

Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

Debt is a trap which man sets and baits himself, and then deliberately gets into.

Knowledge is like money, the more a man gits the more he hankers for.

The more humble a man is before God the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

There is a significant Latin proverb; to wit: Who will guard the guards?

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.

Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don't understand.

Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail.

Show me a thoroughly contented person, and I will show you a useless one.

Human happiness konsists in having what yu want, and wanting what yu have.

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.

Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, But four times he who gets his blow in fust

The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.

It ain't often that a man's reputation outlasts his money.

Theres not a lot of good humor in medicine, but theres a lot of medicine in good humor.

I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.

Dangers are sum like a kold bath, very dangerous while you stand stripped on the bank, but often not only harmless, but invigorating, if you pitch into them.

Experience is a grindstone; and it is lucky for us, if we can get brightened by it, and not ground.

He whom prosperity humbles, and adversity strengthens, is the true hero.

I don't care how much a man talks, if he only says it in a few words.

Lying is like trying to hide in a fog: If you move about you're in danger of bumping your head against the truth, and as soon as the fog blows off, you are gone anyhow.

Politeness is better than logic. You can often persuade when you cannot convince.

I don't never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks' straight is what bothers me.

Silence never makes any blunders.

The morning paper is just as necessary for an American as dew is to the grass.

Where religion is a trade, morality is a merchandise.

Caution, though very often wasted is a good risk to take.

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

Men of genius are like eagles, they live on what they kill, while men of talents are like crows, they live on what has been killed for them.

The greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large.

There is no limit to the vanity of this world. Each spoke in the wheel thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it.

Occasions are rare; and those, who know how to seize upon them, are rarer.

Rivalry and envy are Siamese twins.

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain't so wicked as their neighbors.

About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.

It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.

It is a great deal easier for a man to find a pedigree to fit his virtues than virtues to fit his pedigree.

Man isn't a fool for his ignorance, but rather for believing things that are wrong.

Silence is said to be golden, but the best fools the world has ever produced had nothing to say on the subject

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.

Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel.

There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't.

Adam invented love at first sight, one of the greatest labor-saving machines the world ever saw.

When I see a man of shallow understanding extravagantly clothed, I feel sorry - for the clothes.

Be like a postage stamp - stick to one thing until you get there.

It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain't so.

Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.

And now the lads and lasses, following the example of the birds, bill and coo together.

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.

The books are balanced in heaven, not here.

Pride seems to be equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem to have it just alike.

Laughter is the fireworks of the soul.

I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.

Men are seldom underrated; the mercury in a man finds its true level in the eyes of the world just as certainly as it does in the glass of a thermometer.

If you believe you can do something, then you can acquire the ability to do it even if you didn't have it in the beginning.

There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency; and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.

I hate to be a kicker, I always long for peace, But the wheel that does the squeaking, is the one that gets the grease.