Josh Billings quotes:

It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.

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

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain't so wicked as their neighbors.

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

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

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.

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

The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain't gout.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.

Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.

It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.

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

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

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

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.

Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.

I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.

There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't.

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

It ain't often that a man's reputation outlasts his money.

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

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

The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

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

Beauty is a very handy thing to have, especially for a woman who ain't handsome.

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.

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

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

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

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

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

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

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

We hate those who will not take our advice, and despise them who do.

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

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.

Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.

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

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

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.

I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.

Laughter is the fireworks of the soul.

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

Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit.

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

One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.

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.

Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail.

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.

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.

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

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

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

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

Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.

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

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

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.

The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.

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

Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.

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

Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.

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

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.

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.

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

Pity cost nothing and ain't worth nothing.

Wisdom that don't make us happier ain't worth plowing for.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

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

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.

Woman's influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.

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.

Don't ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.

If a man is right, he can't be too radical; if he is wrong, he can't be too conservative.

Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.

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

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.

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.

Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven confess them to man and you will be laughed at

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute

The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.

the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.

In the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money cannot buy...to wit--the wag of a dog's tail.

Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.

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.

It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.

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

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

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

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.

Poverty is the step-mother of genius.

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

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

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

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

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

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

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.

There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.

I haven't got as much money as some folks, but I've got as much impudence as any of them, and that's the next thing to money.

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

Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread.

It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.

Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.