Josh Billings quotes

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

— Josh Billings

“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

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

— Josh Billings

“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.”

— Josh Billings

“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.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

“No one can disgrace us but ourselves.”

— Josh Billings

“Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

“Remember the poor, it costs nothing.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

“The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.”

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings