Top 250 Josh Billings Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.”

— Josh Billings

Featured in: Short Inspiring Quotes, Health Quotes, Quotes About Ideas

2. “There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”

— Josh Billings

Featured in: Forgiveness Quotes

3. “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”

— Josh Billings

4. “Waves are inspiring not because they rise and fail, but because each time they fall. They never fail to rise again.”

— Josh Billings

5. “Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.”

— Josh Billings

6. “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

Featured in: Enjoy Life Quotes, Silly Quotes, Fitness Quotes, Health Quotes

7. “Silence is one of the hardest kind of arguments to refute. There is no good substitute for wisdom; but silence is the best that has yet been discovered.”

— Josh Billings

8. “Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.”

— Josh Billings

9. “A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains.”

— Josh Billings

10. “Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.”

— Josh Billings

11. “It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain’t so.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

13. “Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.”

— Josh Billings

14. “Don’t ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

16. “I hate to be a kicker, I always long for peace, But the wheel that does the squeaking, is the one that gets the grease.”

— Josh Billings

17. “Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

19. “Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.”

— Josh Billings

20. “Politeness is better than logic. You can often persuade when you cannot convince.”

— Josh Billings

21. “As in a game of cards, so in the game of life, we must play what is dealt to us, and the glory consists, not so much in winning as in playing a poor hand well.”

— Josh Billings

22. “There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won’t.”

— Josh Billings

23. “There is gravity in wisdom, but no particular wisdom in gravity.”

— Josh Billings

24. “The greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large.”

— Josh Billings

25. “It AIN’T so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.”

— Josh Billings

26. “Biography is the best form of history.”

— Josh Billings

27. “Pity costs nothing, and it ain’t worth nothing.”

— Josh Billings

28. “If you believe you can do something, then you can acquire the ability to do it even if you didn’t have it in the beginning.”

— Josh Billings

29. “The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.”

— Josh Billings

30. “Lying is like trying to hide in a fog: If you move about you’re in danger of bumping your head against the truth, and as soon as the fog blows off, you are gone anyhow.”

— Josh Billings

31. “Don’t have any more secrets than you can keep yourself.”

— Josh Billings

32. “I don’t care how much a man talks, if he only says it in a few words.”

— Josh Billings

33. “Debt is a trap which man sets and baits himself, and then deliberately gets into.”

— Josh Billings

34. “Everyone who does the best he can is a hero.”

— Josh Billings

35. “If animals had reason, they would act just as ridiculous as we menfolks do.”

— Josh Billings

36. “Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, But four times he who gets his blow in fust.”

— Josh Billings

37. “The less we know the more we suspect.”

— Josh Billings

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

40. “Ambition is like hunger; it obeys no law but its appetite.”

— Josh Billings

41. “There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency; and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.”

— Josh Billings

42. “You should always live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.”

— Josh Billings

43. “Common sense is an instinct given to man and enough of it is genius. Smartness is measured by the level of common sense one has, not by how much educated or knowledgeable he is.”

— Josh Billings

44. “Laughter is the fireworks of the soul.”

— Josh Billings

45. “Good nonsense is good sense in disguise.”

— Josh Billings

46. “Don’t mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

48. “Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.”

— Josh Billings

49. “Perseverance is king.”

— Josh Billings

50. “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.”

— Josh Billings