I’ve been collecting quotations for years and figured I’d put my collections online for others to use as they wish. Enjoy these quotations, use the comment form to share any quotations by Josh Billings you don’t find here.

More on Josh Billings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
- Josh Billings

There is gravity in wisdom, but no particular wisdom in gravity.
- Josh Billings

There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.
- Josh Billings

Live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.
- Josh Billings

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

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

A learned fool is one who has read everything, and simply remembered it.
- Josh Billings

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
- Josh Billings

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

A slander is like a hornet; if you can’t kill it dead the first time, better not strike at it.
- Josh Billings

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

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

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

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

Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.
- Josh Billings

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

Confess your sins to the Lord, and you will be forgiven; confess them to men, and you will be laughed at.
- Josh Billings

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

Experience increases our wisdom but doesn’t reduce our follies.
- Josh Billings

Experience is a school where a man learns what a big fool he has been.
- Josh Billings

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

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.
- Josh Billings

I’ve never known a person to live to 110 or more, and then die, to be remarkable for anything else.
- Josh Billings

I don’t care how much a man talks, if he only says it in a few words.
- Josh Billings

I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.
- Josh Billings

If a man is right, he can’t be too radical; if he is wrong, he can’t be too conservative.
- Josh Billings

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

In youth we run into difficulties, in old age difficulties run into us.
- Josh Billings

Incredulity is the wisdom of the fool.
- Josh Billings

It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient.
- Josh Billings

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

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.
- Josh Billings

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

It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; we can dodge an elephant, but we can’t dodge a fly.
- Josh Billings

Keep a cow, and the milk won’t have to be watered but once.
- Josh Billings

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

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

Life is like a mountain: after climbing up one side and sliding down the other, put up the sled.
- Josh Billings

Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don’t understand.
- Josh Billings

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.
- Josh Billings

Nature never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool, she means it.
- Josh Billings

Occasions are rare; and those who know how to seize upon them are rarer.
- Josh Billings

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.
- Josh Billings

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

Our necessities are few but our wants are endless.
- Josh Billings

Pity costs nothing, and it ain’t worth nothing.
- Josh Billings

Poverty is one of them kind of misfortunes that we all of us dread but none of us pity.
- Josh Billings

Poverty is the step-mother of genius.
- Josh Billings

Silence is a still noise.
- Josh Billings

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
- Josh Billings

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

The less we know the more we suspect.
- Josh Billings

The man who ain’t got an enemy is really poor.
- Josh Billings

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

The more humble a man is before God, the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.
- Josh Billings

The morning paper is just as necessary for an American as dew is to the grass.
- Josh Billings

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

The wicked work harder to reach hell than the righteous to reach heaven.
- Josh Billings

There’s a lot of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven’t the time to enjoy it.
- Josh Billings

There are people so addicted to exaggeration they can’t tell the truth without lying.
- Josh Billings

There are very few good judges of humor, and they don’t agree.
- Josh Billings

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

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

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
- Josh Billings

There is two things in life for which we are never fully prepared, and that is—twins.
- Josh Billings

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

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

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

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.
- Josh Billings

Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.
- Josh Billings