Josh Billings Quotes

Laughter is the fireworks of the soul.

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.

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

The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide.

Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.

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

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.

The happiest time in any man's life is when he is in red-hot pursuit of a dollar with a reasonable prospect of overtaking it.

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

Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.

There is a sort of charm in ugliness, if the person has some redeeming qualities and is only ugly enough.

Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

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

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.

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.

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

Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess.

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

Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.

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

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

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

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.

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.

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.

There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they actually can't tell the truth without lying.

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.

The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain't gout.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

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

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

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

Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.

One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.

Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.

Wise men have but few confidants, and cunning ones none.

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

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

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.

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.

Incredulity is the wisdom of the fool.

My advice to those who are about to begin, in earnest, the journey of life, is to take their heart in one hand and a club in the other.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.