Top 250 Josh Billings Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “There is no passion of the human heart that promises so much and pays so little as revenge.”

— Josh Billings

102. “True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

104. “Jealousy is one of love’s parasites.”

— Josh Billings

105. “Error will slip through a crack, while truth will stick in a doorway.”

— Josh Billings

106. “As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth – hear both sides and believe neither.”

— Josh Billings

107. “Unless we put heart and soul into our labor we but brutify our actions.”

— Josh Billings

108. “Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity.”

— Josh Billings

109. “True valor is like honesty; it enters into all that a man sees and does.”

— Josh Billings

110. “There are very few good judges of humor, and they don’t agree.”

— Josh Billings

111. “Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.”

— Josh Billings

112. “Most men had rather say a smart thing than do a good one. John P. Kotter, Leading Change.”

— Josh Billings

113. “Stupidity, – unconscious ignorance.”

— Josh Billings

114. “Life is short, but it’s long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

116. “The best creed we can have is charity toward the creeds of others.”

— Josh Billings

117. “Early genius, like early cabbage, does not head well.”

— Josh Billings

118. “Incredulity is the wisdom of the fool.”

— Josh Billings

119. “Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.”

— Josh Billings

120. “Man isn’t a fool for his ignorance, but rather for believing things that are wrong.”

— Josh Billings

121. “The trouble with most folks isn’t their ignorance. It’s knowin’ so many things that ain’t so.”

— Josh Billings

122. “The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

124. “Woman’s influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.”

— Josh Billings

125. “The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.”

— Josh Billings

126. “Clothes form the intellect of the dandy.”

— Josh Billings

127. “If a man is right, he can’t be too radical; if he is wrong, he can’t be too conservative.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

129. “If you would make yourself agreeable wherever you go, listen to the grievances of others but never relate your own.”

— Josh Billings

130. “Rivalry and envy are Siamese twins.”

— Josh Billings

131. “Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first, – to be intelligently simple.”

— Josh Billings

132. “The devil is the father of lies, but he neglected to patent the idea, and the business now suffers from competition.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

136. “There is no limit to the vanity of this world. Each spoke in the wheel thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it.”

— Josh Billings

137. “Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

139. “Never teach your child to be cunning or you may be certain you will be one of the very first victims of his shrewdness.”

— Josh Billings

140. “Theory looks well on paper, but does not amount to anything without practice.”

— Josh Billings

141. “Dangers are sum like a kold bath, very dangerous while you stand stripped on the bank, but often not only harmless, but invigorating, if you pitch into them.”

— Josh Billings

142. “He whom prosperity humbles, and adversity strengthens, is the true hero.”

— Josh Billings

143. “Ignorance is the wet-nurse of prejudice.”

— Josh Billings

144. “Wise men have but few confidants, and cunning ones none.”

— Josh Billings

145. “Contentment is a kind of moral laziness; if there wasn’t anything but contentment in his world, man wouldn’t be any more of a success than an angleworm is.”

— Josh Billings

146. “Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has...”

— Josh Billings

147. “Menny think tha luv their husbands almost tew deth, when in fack, tha are only jealous ov them.”

— Josh Billings

148. “I hold that a man has as much right to spell a word as it is pronounced as he has to pronounce it the way it ain’t spelled.”

— Josh Billings

149. “My advice to those who are about to begin, in earnest, the journey of life, is to take their heart in one hand and a club in the other.”

— Josh Billings

150. “It’s not so hard to get rich as it is to know when you have gotten rich.”

— Josh Billings