Josh Billings Quotes

175 Sourced Quotes

Mankind loves mysteries — a hole in the ground, excites more wonder than a star in the heavens.

Josh Billings
There is such a thing as being always too quick — I am one of that kind myself, I always miss a railroad train by being there half an hour too soon.

Josh Billings
Life is a grindstone, and whether it grinds a man down or polishes him up depends on the stuff he's made of.

Josh Billings
Poor human nature is too full of its own grievances to have any pity to spare, — if you show a man a big bile on your arm, he will tell you he had one twice as big as that, on the same spot, last year.

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

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

Josh Billings
I had rather be a pot-bellied seed cowcumber, flung carelessly on a wood pile to ripen, than tew be an old bachelor.

Josh Billings
A man's reputation is something like his coat, there is certain chemicals that will take the stains and grease spots out of it, but it always has a second-handed kind of a look, and generally smells strong of the chemicals.

Josh Billings
Love has a most voracious appetite, but a poor digestion, what it feeds on most always distresses it. Prudes, are coquettes, gone to seed. It is our duty to pray for them who revile and persecute us, but I don't know as we are obliged to let them know it.

Josh Billings
When I come across people who are perfectly crazy for ventilation, I say to myself, "that critter was brought up in a windmill."

Josh Billings
The man who can wear a paper collar a hole week and keep, it clean, ain't fit for any thing else.

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

Josh Billings
Too much religion is worse than none at all. You can't show me a country that has existed yet, where the people, all of them, professed one religion and persecuted all other kinds, but what the religion ruined the country.

Josh Billings
I don't recall now of ever hearing of two dogs fighting unless there was a man or two around.

Josh Billings
Many people spend their time trying to find the hole where sin got into this world—if two men brake through the ice into a mill pond, they had better hunt for sum good hole to get out, rather than get into a long argument about the hole they come to fall in.

Josh Billings
The man who pitys everyboddy, wants watching, for the chances are that he iz gitting phatt slily on other peoples misfortunes.

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

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

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

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

Josh Billings
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