Josh billings quotes

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

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

Advice is like castor oil — easy enough to give but dreadful hard to take.

The time to pray is not when we are in a tight spot but just as soon as we get out of it.

Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.

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

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.

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

There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.

As the flint contains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can awaken to life, so adversity often reveals to us hidden gems, which prosperity or negligence would forever have hidden.

Laughter is the fireworks of the soul.

There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.

Ignorance ain't not knowin' stuff; ignorance is knowin' stuff that AIN'T TRUE.

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

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

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.

There is no passion of the human heart that promises so much and pays so little as revenge.

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

Nature makes all the noblemen; wealth, education, or pedigree never made one yet.

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

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.

Prejudice assumes the garb of reason, but the cheat is too thin.

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.

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

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

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

The trouble with most folks isn't their ignorance. It's knowin' so many things that ain't so.

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

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

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains.

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.

Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones.

Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.

Men who have much to say use the fewest words.

There is not a whole lot of fun in medicine but there is a whole lot of medicine in fun.

Marrying a woman for her money is very much like setting a rat-trap, and baiting it with your own finger.

As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth - hear both sides and believe neither.

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

It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; we can dodge a elephant, but we can't dodge a fly.

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

The devil is the father of lies, but he neglected to patent the idea, and the business now suffers from competition.

The very thing that men think they have got the most of, they have got the least of; and that is judgment.

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

True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence.

Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.

One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.

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.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

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

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

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

Silence is a still noise.

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

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

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

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.

Wisdom deprives even poverty of half its power.

One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.

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.

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

Everybody in this world wants watching, but nobody more than ourselves.

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

Man is my brother, and I am nearer related to him through his vices than I am through his virtue.

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

When the truth is in your way, you are on the wrong road.

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

The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.

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

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

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.

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

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

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

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

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

What the world wants iz [sic] good examples, not so mutch advice; advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.

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

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

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

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

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 good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.

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

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

Common sense is an instinct given to man and enough of it is genius. Smartness is measured by the level of common sense one has, not by how much educated or knowledgeable he is.

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.

Plenty of folks are so contrary that if they should fall into the river, they would insist upon floating upstream.

Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.

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

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.

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.

Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.

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.

The unfortunate do not pity the unfortunate.

If you do not know how to lie, cheat, and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.

A learned fool is one who has read everything and simply remembered it.

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

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

I would much rather always look forward to the time when I am going to ride in a carriage, than to look back on the time when I used to.

Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.

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

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

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

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sumtime lay down in this world together for a fu minnits, but when the lion kums tew git up, the lamb will be missing.

Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity.

We mingle in society not so much to meet others as to escape ourselves.

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

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

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.

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

Method is the arithmetic of success.

The man who has never been tempted doesn't know how dishonest he is.

Opinions should be formed with great caution, and changed with greater.

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

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

Take the selfishness out of this world and there would be more happiness than we should know what to do with.

You should always live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.

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

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

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.