There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.
– Josh Billings
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.
– Josh Billings
A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.
– Josh Billings
A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.
– Josh Billings
A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates.
– Josh Billings
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
– Josh Billings
About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.
– Josh Billings
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
– Josh Billings
Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.
– Josh Billings
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
– Josh Billings
Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.
– Josh Billings
Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
– Josh Billings
Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
– Josh Billings
Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.
– Josh Billings
Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
– Josh Billings
Don't ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.
– Josh Billings
Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.
– Josh Billings
Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.
– Josh Billings
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.
– 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
I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.
– Josh Billings
I haven't got as much money as some folks, but I've got as much impudence as any of them, and that's the next thing to money.
– Josh Billings
I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.
– Josh Billings
If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.
– Josh Billings
If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We could not even eat hash with any safety.
– Josh Billings
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
– Josh Billings
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.
– Josh Billings
It ain't often that a man's reputation outlasts his money.
– Josh Billings
It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.
– Josh Billings
It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.
– Josh Billings
It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.
– Josh Billings
It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.
– Josh Billings
It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.
– Josh Billings
Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.
– Josh Billings
Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.
– Josh Billings
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
– Josh Billings
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
– Josh Billings
Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.
– Josh Billings
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.
– Josh Billings
Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
– Josh Billings
Man was created a little lower than the angels and has bin getting a little lower ever since.
– Josh Billings
Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
– Josh Billings
Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.
– Josh Billings
Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain't so wicked as their neighbors.
– Josh Billings
Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.
– Josh Billings
No one can disgrace us but ourselves.
– Josh Billings
Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.
– Josh Billings
One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.
– Josh Billings
One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.
– Josh Billings
Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
– Josh Billings
Remember the poor, it costs nothing.
– Josh Billings
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
– Josh Billings
Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit.
– Josh Billings
The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain't gout.
– Josh Billings
The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.
– Josh Billings
The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.
– Josh Billings
The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.
– Josh Billings
The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.
– Josh Billings
The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.
– Josh Billings
The trouble with most folks ain't so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain't so.
– Josh Billings
The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.
– Josh Billings
The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
– Josh Billings
There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.
– Josh Billings
There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.
– Josh Billings
There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.
– Josh Billings
There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won t.
– Josh Billings
There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: Twins.
– Josh Billings
There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.
– Josh Billings
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
– Josh Billings
There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.
– Josh Billings
Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.
– Josh Billings
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
– Josh Billings
When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.
– Josh Billings
Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.
– Josh Billings
Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.
– Josh Billings
Every man has his follies -- and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
– Josh Billings
Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.
– Josh Billings
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
– Josh Billings
One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.
– Josh Billings
The time to pray is not when we are in a tight spot but just as soon as we get out of it.
– Josh Billings
Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.
– Josh Billings
Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail.
– Josh Billings
As a general thing, when a woman wears the pants in a family, she has a good right to them.
