Josh Billings Quotes

175 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.

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

Josh Billings
I don't know as it is a very difficult thing to be a good Indian up in heaven, but to come down here and be a good Indian, is just where the tight spot comes in.

Josh Billings
The cheapest and best way to convince a fool, is to agree with him.

Josh Billings
It is better to look wise, than to talk foolish.

Josh Billings
Every man has a perfect right to his opinion, provided it agrees with ours.

Josh Billings
There is no such thing as being proud before man and humble before God.

Josh Billings
Our continual desire for praise ought to satisfy us of our mortality, if nothing else will.

Josh Billings
People of good sense are those whose opinions agree with ours.

Josh Billings
The hornet is an inflammable bugger, sudden in his impressions and hasty in his conclusion, or end. His natural disposition is a warm cross between red pepper in the pod and fusel oil and his moral bias is, "Get out of my way."

Josh Billings
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.

Josh Billings
Friendship is like earthenware, once broken, it can be mended; love is like a mirror, once broken that ends it.

Josh Billings
Menny think tha luv their husbands almost tew deth, when in fack, tha are only jealous ov them.

Josh Billings
Habits are like the wrinkles on a man's brow; if you will smooth out the one, I will smooth out the other.

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

Josh Billings