Josh Billings

Confess your sins to the Lord, and you will be forgiven; confess them to men, and you will be laughed at

— Josh Billings

Young widows still bide their time.

— Josh Billings

Marrying a woman for her money is very much like setting a rat-trap, and baiting it with your own finger.

— Josh Billings

Pity costs nothing, and it ain't worth nothing.

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

Plenty of folks are so contrary that if they should fall into the river, they would insist upon floating upstream.

— Josh Billings

Pyrotechnically considered, [laughing] is the fire-works of the soul.

— Josh Billings

It is true that wealth won't make a man virtuous, but I notice there ain't anybody who wants to be poor just…

— Josh Billings

Contentment is a kind of moral laziness; if thare want ennything but contentment in his world, man wouldn't be any more of…

— Josh Billings

Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.

— Josh Billings

When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to…

— Josh Billings

The highest philosophers, in explaining the mystery of this world, are obliged to call in the aid of another.

— 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…

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

Stupidity,--unconscious ignorance.

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

— Josh Billings

[Science is] the literature of truth.

— Josh Billings

Admiration is a youthful fancy will which scarcely ever survives to mature years.

— Josh Billings

What the world wants iz [sic] good examples, not so mutch advice; advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.

— Josh Billings

Wisdom deprives even poverty of half its power.

— Josh Billings

Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a blunder.

— Josh Billings

You'd better not know so much, than to know so many things that ain't so.

— Josh Billings

Advice maybe wrong, but examples prove themselves.

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings