Top 250 Josh Billings Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Adam invented love at first sight, one of the greatest labor-saving machines the world ever saw.”

— Josh Billings

152. “People travel to learn; most of them before they start should learn to travel.”

— Josh Billings

153. “The fools in this world make about as much trouble as the wicked do.”

— Josh Billings

154. “The very thing that men think they have got the most of, they have got the least of; and that is judgment.”

— Josh Billings

155. “A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.”

— Josh Billings

156. “Peace is the soft and holy shadow that virtue casts.”

— Josh Billings

157. “Theres not a lot of good humor in medicine, but theres a lot of medicine in good humor.”

— Josh Billings

158. “The dog that will follow everbody ain’t worth a curse.”

— Josh Billings

159. “Dr. Holmes says, both wittily and truly, that crying widows are easiest consoled.”

— Josh Billings

160. “I never question a success, any more than I do the right of a bulldog to lie in his own gateway.”

— Josh Billings

161. “Rumor is a vagrant without a home, and lives upon what it can pick up.”

— Josh Billings

162. “Music wasn’t made to make us wise, but better natured.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

164. “Experience is a grindstone; and it is lucky for us, if we can get brightened by it, and not ground.”

— Josh Billings

165. “Fun is a sugar-coated physic.”

— Josh Billings

166. “When the truth is in your way, you are on the wrong road.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

168. “The quickest way to take the starch out of someone who is always blaming himself is to agree with him.”

— Josh Billings

169. “Nature makes all the noblemen; wealth, education, or pedigree never made one yet.”

— Josh Billings

170. “A secret ceases to be a secret if it is once confided – it is like a dollar bill, once broken, it is never a dollar again.”

— Josh Billings

171. “Poverty is the step-mother of genius.”

— Josh Billings

172. “You cannot analyze a kiss any more than you can dissect the fragrance of flowers.”

— Josh Billings

173. “When a man makes up his mind to become a rascal, he should examine himself closely and see if he isn’t better constructed for a fool.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

175. “Occasions are rare; and those, who know how to seize upon them, are rarer.”

— Josh Billings

176. “The hardest thing any man can do is to fall down on the ice when it’s slippery, and get up and praise the Lord.”

— Josh Billings

177. “Sekts and creeds ov religion, are like pocket compesses, good enuff tu pinte out the direction, but the nearer the pole yu git thewuss tha wurk.”

— Josh Billings

178. “Titles are valuable; they make us acquainted with many persons who otherwise would be lost among the rubbish.”

— Josh Billings

179. “Young widows still bide their time.”

— Josh Billings

180. “Silence is said to be golden, but the best fools the world has ever produced had nothing to say on the subject.”

— Josh Billings

181. “It ain’t no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lie there and grunt is.”

— Josh Billings

182. “A man cannot learn to be wise any more than he can learn to be handsome.”

— Josh Billings

183. “When I see a man of shallow understanding extravagantly clothed, I feel sorry – for the clothes.”

— Josh Billings

184. “Men who have much to say use the fewest words.”

— Josh Billings

185. “Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it.”

— Josh Billings

186. “There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.”

— Josh Billings

187. “Human happiness konsists in having what yu want, and wanting what yu have.”

— Josh Billings

188. “Suicide is cheating the doctor out of job.”

— Josh Billings

189. “Faith is the soul riding at anchor.”

— Josh Billings

190. “Most everyone seems willing to be a fool himself, but he can’t bear to have anyone else one.”

— Josh Billings

191. “Habits are like the wrinkles on a man’s brow; if you will smooth out the one, I will smooth out the other.”

— Josh Billings

192. “A wise man never enjoys himself so much, nor a fool so little, as when alone.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

194. “Some folks as they grow older grow wise but most folks simply grow stubborner.”

— Josh Billings

195. “There is a sort of charm in ugliness, if the person has some redeeming qualities and is only ugly enough.”

— Josh Billings

196. “Doesn’t know much, but leads the league in nostril hair.”

— Josh Billings

197. “We mingle in society not so much to meet others as to escape ourselves.”

— Josh Billings

198. “Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been getting a little lower ever since.”

— Josh Billings

199. “Men are seldom underrated; the mercury in a man finds its true level in the eyes of the world just as certainly as it does in the glass of a thermometer.”

— Josh Billings

200. “It is a great deal easier for a man to find a pedigree to fit his virtues than virtues to fit his pedigree.”

— Josh Billings