Josh Billings Quotes

Advice maybe wrong, but examples prove themselves.

Dr. Holmes says, both wittily and truly, that crying widows are easiest consoled.

Theory looks well on paper, but does not amount to anything without practice.

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.

There are very few good judges of humor, and they don't agree.

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

You can reach stupidity only with a cannon ball.

Silence never makes any blunders.

Rumor is a vagrant without a home, and lives upon what it can pick up.

Some folks as they grow older grow wise but most folks simply grow stubborner.

Early genius, like early cabbage, does not head well.

Stupidity,--unconscious ignorance.

Every man should know something of law; if he knows enough to keep out of it, he is a pretty good lawyer.

Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates.

Titles are valuable; they make us acquainted with many persons who otherwise would be lost among the rubbish.

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

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

Fortune is like a coquette; if you don't run after her, she will run after you.

I never question a success, any more than I do the right of a bulldog to lie in his own gateway.

the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a blunder.

Silence is a still noise.

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

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.

Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.

I hold that a man has as much right to spell a word as it is pronounced as he has to pronounce it the way it ain't spelled.

As in a game ov cards, so in the game ov life, we must play what is dealt tew us, and the glory consists, not so mutch in winning, as in playing a poor hand well.

The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old.

A WISE MAN never enjoys himself so much, or a FOOL so little, as when he is alone.

There is only one good substitute for the endearments of a sister, and that is the endearments of some other fellow's sister.

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

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

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

People travel to learn; most of them before they start should learn to travel.

It is not much trouble to doctor sick folks, but to doctor healthy ones is troublesome.

Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.

Building air castles is a harmless business as long as you don't attempt to live in them.

The books are balanced in heaven, not here.

Advice can be like cod liver oil, easy enough to administer but not so pleasant to take for anybody.

Ignorance is the wet-nurse of prejudice.

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

Tears are a good alterative, but a poor diet.

Virtue does not consist in the absence of the passions, but in the control of them.

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

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

The best creed we can have is charity toward the creeds of others.

It is easier to be virtuous than it is to appear so, and it pays better.

I've never known an auctioneer to lie unless it was absolutely necessary.

Fashion makes fools of some, sinners of others, and slaves of all.

Young widows still bide their time.