Top 250 Josh Billings Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess.”

— Josh Billings

52. “Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I’d try a revolver first.”

— Josh Billings

53. “A slander is like a hornet; if you cannot kill it dead at the first blow, better not to strike at it.”

— Josh Billings

54. “Experience increases our wisdom but doesn’t reduce our follies.”

— Josh Billings

55. “Method is the arithmetic of success.”

— Josh Billings

56. “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.”

— Josh Billings

57. “Silence is a still noise.”

— Josh Billings

58. “There’s one good thing about tight shoes; they make you forget your other troubles.”

— Josh Billings

59. “Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.”

— Josh Billings

60. “If you do not know how to lie, cheat, and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.”

— Josh Billings

61. “It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; we can dodge a elephant, but we can’t dodge a fly.”

— Josh Billings

62. “People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.”

— Josh Billings

63. “As the flint contains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can awaken to life, so adversity often reveals to us hidden gems, which prosperity or negligence would forever have hidden.”

— Josh Billings

64. “Opinions should be formed with great caution, and changed with greater.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

67. “If mankind were only just what they pretend to be, the problem of the millennium would be immediately solved.”

— Josh Billings

68. “The man who ain’t got an enemy is really poor.”

— Josh Billings

69. “As a general thing, an individual who is neat in his person is neat in his morals.”

— Josh Billings

70. “Shame is the dying embers of virtue.”

— Josh Billings

71. “Some folks are wise and some otherwise.”

— Josh Billings

72. “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

73. “Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don’t understand.”

— Josh Billings

74. “Our continual desire for praise ought to convince us of our mortality, if nothing else will.”

— Josh Billings

75. “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

76. “Pedantry is paraded knowledge.”

— Josh Billings

77. “The morning paper is just as necessary for an American as dew is to the grass.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

80. “Selfish people, with no heart to speak of, have the best time of it.”

— Josh Billings

81. “It is easy to assume a habit; but when you try to cast it off, it will take skin and all.”

— Josh Billings

82. “It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.”

— Josh Billings

83. “Men of genius are like eagles, they live on what they kill, while men of talents are like crows, they live on what has been killed for them.”

— Josh Billings

84. “When you do laugh, open your mouth wide enough for the noise to get out without squealing, throw your head back as though you were going to be shaved, hold on to your false hair with both hands and then laugh till your soul gets thoroughly rested.”

— Josh Billings

85. “Newfoundland dogs are good to save children from drowning, but you must have a pond of water handy and a child, or else there will be no profit in boarding a Newfoundland.”

— Josh Billings

86. “It’s a wise man who profits by his own experience, but it’s a good deal wiser one who lets the rattlesnake bite the other fellow.”

— Josh Billings

87. “Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

89. “A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

91. “To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.”

— Josh Billings

92. “Hunting after happiness is like hunting after a lost sheep in the wilderness – when you find it, the chances are that it is a skeleton.”

— Josh Billings

93. “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul I suppose this depends somewhat upon the size of the soul. I think there are cases where the trade would do.”

— Josh Billings

94. “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

95. “Where religion is a trade, morality is a merchandise.”

— Josh Billings

96. “Rumor is like bees; the more you fight them the more you don’t get rid of them.”

— Josh Billings

97. “I called my cat William because no shorter name fits the dignity of his character. Poor old man, he has fits now, so I call him Fitz-William.”

— Josh Billings

98. “The best condition in life is to be not so rich as to be envied nor so poor as to be damned.”

— Josh Billings

99. “Every man should know something of law; if he knows enough to keep out of it, he is a pretty good lawyer.”

— Josh Billings

100. “If men were stubborn just in proportion as they were right, stubbornness would take her seat among the virtues; but men are generally stubborn just in proportion as they are ignorant and wrong.”

— Josh Billings