Top 250 Josh Billings Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.”

— Josh Billings

202. “Prejudice assumes the garb of reason, but the cheat is too thin.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

204. “Fortune is like a coquette; if you don’t run after her, she will run after you.”

— Josh Billings

205. “Caution, though very often wasted is a good risk to take.”

— Josh Billings

206. “The truly innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves but who think others are.”

— Josh Billings

207. “I never knew a man troubled with melancholy, who had plenty to do, and did it.”

— Josh Billings

208. “It strains a man’s philosophy the worst kind to laugh when he gets beat.”

— Josh Billings

209. “Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones.”

— Josh Billings

210. “Fuss is half-sister to hurry, and neither of them can do anything without getting in their own way.”

— Josh Billings

211. “A man running for office puts me in mind of a dog that’s lost-he smells everybody he meets, and wags himself all over.”

— Josh Billings

212. “It is true that wealth won’t make a man virtuous, but I notice there ain’t anybody who wants to be poor just for the purpose of being good.”

— Josh Billings

213. “Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.”

— Josh Billings

214. “Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a blunder.”

— Josh Billings

215. “Truth is the edict of God.”

— Josh Billings

216. “The books are balanced in heaven, not here.”

— Josh Billings

217. “It ain’t because lovers are so sensitive that they quarrel so often; it is because there is so much fun n the making up.”

— Josh Billings

218. “I would much rather always look forward to the time when I am going to ride in a carriage, than to look back on the time when I used to.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

220. “Prejudice is a house-plant which is very apt to wilt if you take it out-of-doors among folks.”

— Josh Billings

221. “Show me a thoroughly contented person, and I will show you a useless one.”

— Josh Billings

222. “Fools carry their daggers in their open mouths.”

— Josh Billings

223. “The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sumtime lay down in this world together for a fu minnits, but when the lion kums tew git up, the lamb will be missing.”

— Josh Billings

224. “Wisdom that don’t make us happier ain’t worth plowing for.”

— Josh Billings

225. “It is not much trouble to doctor sick folks, but to doctor healthy ones is troublesome.”

— Josh Billings

226. “Genuine laughing is the vent of the soul, the nostrils of the heart, and just as necessary for health and happiness as spring water is for a trout.”

— Josh Billings

227. “The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain’t gout.”

— Josh Billings

228. “The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old.”

— Josh Billings

229. “Society is composed of slow Christians and wide-awake sinners.”

— Josh Billings

230. “The man who gets bit twice by the same dog is better adapted for that kind of business than any other.”

— Josh Billings

231. “The soul has more diseases than the body.”

— Josh Billings

232. “I’ve never known an auctioneer to lie unless it was absolutely necessary.”

— Josh Billings

233. “It is easier to be virtuous than it is to appear so, and it pays better.”

— Josh Billings

234. “Despatch is taking time by the ears; hurry is taking it by the end of the tail.”

— Josh Billings

235. “Ill-nature is a sort of running sore of the disposition.”

— Josh Billings

236. “Knowledge is like money, the more a man gits the more he hankers for.”

— Josh Billings

237. “Virtue does not consist in the absence of the passions, but in the control of them.”

— Josh Billings

238. “There never yet was a mother who taught her child to be an infidel.”

— Josh Billings

239. “Pride seems to be equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem to have it just alike.”

— Josh Billings

240. “Wisdom deprives even poverty of half its power.”

— Josh Billings

241. “There is only one good substitute for the endearments of a sister, and that is the endearments of some other fellow’s sister.”

— Josh Billings

242. “When a young man begins to go down hill everything seems to be greased for the occasion.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

244. “Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel.”

— Josh Billings

245. “Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.”

— Josh Billings

246. “Building air castles is a harmless business as long as you don’t attempt to live in them.”

— Josh Billings

247. “It is a great art to be superior to others without letting them know it.”

— Josh Billings

248. “Everybody in this world wants watching, but nobody more than ourselves.”

— Josh Billings

249. “The unfortunate do not pity the unfortunate.”

— Josh Billings

250. “Poverty is one of them kind of misfortunes that we all of us dread but none of us pity.”

— Josh Billings