Quotes by Billings, Josh

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist -- it reduces him to his fighting weight.

More quotes about Adversity

Advice is like castor oil, easy to give, but dreadful to take.

More quotes about Advice

Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.

More quotes about Advice

I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.

More quotes about Age and Aging

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.

More quotes about Age and Aging

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.

More quotes about Animals

The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.

More quotes about Anxiety

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

More quotes about Attitude

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.

More quotes about Bigotry

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

More quotes about Brevity

The happiest time in a man's life is when he is in the red hot pursuit of a dollar with a reasonable prospect of overtaking it.

More quotes about Business

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

More quotes about Certainty

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.

More quotes about Common Sense

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

More quotes about Conscience

Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.

More quotes about Control

Always live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.

More quotes about Debt

Never run into debt, not if you can find anything else to run into.

More quotes about Debt

When a man gets talking about himself, he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.

More quotes about Eloquence

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.

More quotes about Exaggeration

Experience is a school where a man learns what a big fool he has been.

More quotes about Experience

Experience increases our wisdom but doesn't reduce our follies.

More quotes about Experience

If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We could not even eat hash with any safety.

More quotes about Faith

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

More quotes about Flattery

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

More quotes about Fools and Foolishness

Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit.

More quotes about Fools and Foolishness

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his way.

More quotes about Fools and Foolishness

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

More quotes about Forgiveness

A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates.

More quotes about Friends and Friendship

The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide.

More quotes about Glutton

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

More quotes about Happiness

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.

More quotes about Happiness

There's lots of people who spend so much time watching their health, they haven't got time to enjoy it.

More quotes about Health

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.

More quotes about Honesty

The more humble a man is before God the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.

More quotes about Humility

Incredulity is the wisdom of the fool.

More quotes about Incredulity

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

More quotes about Knowledge

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

More quotes about Knowledge

The trouble with most folks ain't so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain't so.

More quotes about Knowledge

Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.

More quotes about Life and Living

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.

More quotes about Life and Living

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

More quotes about Life and Living

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.

More quotes about Love

As a general thing, when the woman wears the pants in the family, she has a good right to them.

More quotes about Marriage

The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord it ain't the gout.

More quotes about Medicine

Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.

More quotes about Men and Women

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.

More quotes about Money

Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.

More quotes about Mother-in-Laws

Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.

More quotes about Music

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.

More quotes about Perfection

Consider the postage stamp, my son. It secures success through its ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.

More quotes about Perseverance

To enjoy a good reputation give publicly, and steal privately.

More quotes about Philanthropists

Pity cost nothing and ain't worth nothing.

More quotes about Pity

A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.

More quotes about Places

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

More quotes about Plagiarism

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.

More quotes about Pleasure

Poverty is the step-mother of genius.

More quotes about Poverty and The Poor

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.

More quotes about Poverty and The Poor

I am a poor man, but I have this consolation: I am poor by accident, not by design.

More quotes about Poverty and The Poor

Woman's influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.

More quotes about Power

Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.

More quotes about Procrastination

Don't ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.

More quotes about Prophecy

One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.

More quotes about Quality

It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.

More quotes about Repentance

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain't so wicked as their neighbors.

More quotes about Repentance

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.

More quotes about Scandal

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

More quotes about Self-control

It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.

More quotes about self-discovery

It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.

More quotes about Self-knowledge

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

More quotes about Silence

I don't care how much a person talks, if they only say it in a few words.

More quotes about Speakers and Speaking

As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.

More quotes about Success

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

More quotes about Surprises

Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.

More quotes about Time and Time Management

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

More quotes about Truth

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

More quotes about Upbringing

There is a significant Latin proverb; to wit: Who will guard the guards?

More quotes about Vigilance

It ain't so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich.

More quotes about Wealth

It is a statistical fact that the wicked work harder to reach hell than the righteous do to enter heaven.

More quotes about Wickedness

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

More quotes about Wisdom

Never work before breakfast. If you have to work before breakfast, get your breakfast first.

More quotes about Work

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

More quotes about Youth