Josh Billings

Biography is the best form of history.

— Josh Billings

Jealousy is one of love's parasites.

— Josh Billings

the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

— Josh Billings

Good nonsense is good sense in disguise.

— Josh Billings

Young widows still bide their time.

— Josh Billings

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

— Josh Billings

Laughter is the fireworks of the soul.

— Josh Billings

Stupidity,--unconscious ignorance.

— Josh Billings

Knowledge is like money: the more one gets, the more one craves.

— Josh Billings

Keep a cow, and then the milk won't have to be watered but once.

— Josh Billings

Rumor is a vagrant without a home, and lives upon what it can pick up.

— Josh Billings

Fashion makes fools of some, sinners of others, and slaves of all.

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

One legged chickens, I know, are the least apt to scratch a garden.

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

I've never known an auctioneer to lie unless it was absolutely necessary.

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

And now the lads and lasses, following the example of the birds, bill and coo together.

— Josh Billings

Life is like a mountain: after climbing up one side and sliding down the other, put up the sled.

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

When good-natured people leave us we look forward with extra pleasure to their return.

— 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

It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.

— Josh Billings

When you do laugh, open your mouth wide enough for the noise to get out without squealing, throw your head back as…

— Josh Billings

What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul I suppose this depends somewhat…

— Josh Billings

It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow.…

— Josh Billings

If men were stubborn just in proportion as they were right, stubbornness would take her seat among the virtues; but men are…

— Josh Billings

As the flint contains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can awaken to life, so adversity often reveals to…

— Josh Billings

Newfoundland dogs are good to save children from drowning, but you must have a pond of water handy and a child, or…

— Josh Billings

Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in,…

— Josh Billings

Common sense is an instinct given to man and enough of it is genius. Smartness is measured by the level of common…

— Josh Billings

“There is one kind of laugh that I always did recommend; it looks out of the eye first with a merry twinkle,…

— Josh Billings

Taking from others never results in prosperity. If we steal from others, life will steal from us. There is an incredible abundance…

— Josh Billings

Rivalry and envy are Siamese twins.

— Josh Billings

Method is the arithmetic of success.

— Josh Billings

Silence is a still noise.

— Josh Billings

[Science is] the literature of truth.

— Josh Billings

Pedantry is paraded knowledge.

— Josh Billings

Anxiety will bear a lot of nuisance.

— Josh Billings