Josh Billings Quotes

175 Sourced Quotes

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

Josh Billings

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

Josh Billings

I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.

Josh Billings

Hunters and gamblers are poor economists, they kill time, a species of game that can't be reproduced.

Josh Billings

Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.

Josh Billings

I don't know as I want to bet any money, and give odds, on the man, who is always anxious to pray out loud, every chance he can get.

Josh Billings

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

Josh Billings

Take all the prophecies that have come to pass, and all that have caught on the center, and failed to come to time, and make them up in an average, and yer will find, that buying stock, on the Codfish Bank of Nufoundland, at 50%, for a rise, is, in comparison, a good speculative business.

Josh Billings

I don't suppose there has ever lived a man without a single virtue. Even Judas Iscariot "went and hanged himself."

Josh Billings

It is comparatively easy to repent of the sins that we have committed, but to repent of those which we intend to commit, is asking too much of any man, now days.

Josh Billings

As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.

Josh Billings

To bring up a child in the way he should go—travel that way yourself.

Josh Billings

I have studied my own character, and my own impulses for 39 years closely, and I can't tell to day (to save a bet) whether I am an honest and true man or not — if there is anybody who knows about this matter I wish they would address me a letter, enclosing a postage blister.

Josh Billings

The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sometime lay down in this world together for a few minutes, but when the lion comes to get up, the lamb will be missing.

Josh Billings

I rather admire the insolent civility of a bull-tarrier, who only growls when I pass by him, but I never did like it in a man.

Josh Billings

Wisdom that don't make us happier ain't worth plowing for.

Josh Billings

A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe.

Josh Billings

The hardest thing that any man can do is to fall down on the ice when it is wet, and get up and praise the Lord.

Josh Billings

I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

Josh Billings

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

Josh Billings

Nature never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.

Josh Billings

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

Josh Billings

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

Josh Billings

As a gineral thing, when a woman wares the britches, she has a good rite tew them.

Josh Billings

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her spectacles, safe on her nose all the time.

Josh Billings

I wouldn't undertake to correct a man's sectarian views any quicker than I would tell him which road to take at a 4 corners, when I didn't know myself which was the right one.

Josh Billings

I believe in the universal salvation of men, but I want to pick the men.

Josh Billings

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

Josh Billings

There are people who don't do anything but watch their symptoms. I have seen dogs act just as sensible, I have seen a rat terrier watch the symptoms of a knot hole, in a board fence, all day, for some rat to come out, but no rat came out.

Josh Billings

If it want for faith, thare would be no living in this world. We couldn't even eat hash with enny safety, if it want for faith.

Josh Billings

Josh Billings

Josh Billings

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Born: April 21, 1818

Died: October 14, 1885 (aged 67)

Bio: Josh Billings was the pen name of 19th-century American humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw. He was a famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States, perhaps second only to Mark Twain, during the latter half of the 19th century.

Known for:

Josh Billings, Hiz Sayings (1865)
Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868)

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Josh Billings on Wikipedia

Josh Billings works on Gutenberg Project

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