Josh Billings
» Adversity » “Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist — it reduces him to his fighting weight.”
» Advice » “Advice is like castor oil, easy to give, but dreadful to take.”
» Advice » “Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.”
» Age and Aging » “In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.”
» Age and Aging » “I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.”
» Animals » “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.”
» Anxiety » “The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.”
» Attitude » “It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.”
» Bigotry » “Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.”
» Brevity » “There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.”
» Business » “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.”
» Certainty » “I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am the most certain of the first time.”
» Common Sense » “Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.”
» Conscience » “Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.”
» Control » “Don’t take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.”
» Debt » “Always live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.”
» Debt » “Never run into debt, not if you can find anything else to run into.”
» Eloquence » “When a man gets talking about himself, he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.”
» Exaggeration » “There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying.”
» Experience » “Experience increases our wisdom but doesn’t reduce our follies.”
» Experience » “Experience is a school where a man learns what a big fool he has been.”
» Faith » “If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We could not even eat hash with any safety.”
» Flattery » “Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.”
» Fools and Foolishness » “Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn’t be any fun living in it, or profit.”
» Fools and Foolishness » “The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his way.”
» Fools and Foolishness » “There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won t.”
» Forgiveness » “There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”
» Glutton » “The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide.”
» Happiness » “A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.”
» Happiness » “If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.”
» Health » “There’s lots of people who spend so much time watching their health, they haven’t got time to enjoy it.”
» Honesty » “Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread.”
» Humility » “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.”
» Knowledge » “I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.”
» Knowledge » “Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.”
» Knowledge » “The trouble with most folks ain’t so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain’t so.”
» Life and Living » “Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.”
» Life and Living » “Life is short, but it’s long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.”
» Life and Living » “Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can’t suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.”
» Love » “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.”
» Marriage » “As a general thing, when the woman wears the pants in the family, she has a good right to them.”
» Medicine » “The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord it ain’t the gout.”
» Men and Women » “Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain’t got.”
» Money » “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.”
» Mother-in-Laws » “Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.”
» Music » “Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I’d try a revolver first.”
» Perfection » “If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.”
» Perseverance » “Consider the postage stamp, my son. It secures success through its ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.”
» Philanthropists » “To enjoy a good reputation give publicly, and steal privately.”
» Pity » “Pity cost nothing and ain’t worth nothing.”
» Places » “A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.”
» Plagiarism » “About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.”
» Pleasure » “Don’t mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.”
» Poverty and The Poor » “I am a poor man, but I have this consolation: I am poor by accident, not by design.”
» Poverty and The Poor » “Poverty is the step-mother of genius.”
» Poverty and The Poor » “Remember the poor, it costs nothing.”
» Power » “Woman’s influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.”
» Procrastination » “Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.”
» Prophecy » “Don’t ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.”
» Quality » “One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.”
» Repentance » “It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.”
» Repentance » “Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.”
» Scandal » “Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.”
» Self-control » “The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.”
» Self-discovery » “It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient.”
» Self-knowledge » “It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient.”
» Silence » “Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.”
» Speakers and Speaking » “I don’t care how much a person talks, if they only say it in a few words.”
» Success » “As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.”
» Surprises » “There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.”
» Time and Time Management » “Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.”
» Truth » “As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.”
» Upbringing » “To bring up a child in the way he should go — travel that way yourself.”
» Vigilance » “There is a significant Latin proverb; to wit: Who will guard the guards?”
» Wealth » “It ain’t so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich.”
» Wickedness » “It is a statistical fact that the wicked work harder to reach hell than the righteous do to enter heaven.”
» Wisdom » “Some folks are wise and some otherwise.”
» Work » “Never work before breakfast. If you have to work before breakfast, get your breakfast first.”
» Youth » “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
