The quotations are arranged by author name. Current counts: Authors: 8,146. Quotations: 38,970 Select the first character of the author's last name that you want to look at: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

---

Josh Billings

b: Lanesboro, Massachusetts, Apr 21, 1818

d: Monterey, California, Oct 14, 1885

American. Author. Wrote bucolic aphorisms phrase in grotesque misspellings: Josh Billings' Farmer's Allminax, 1869-80.

---

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.

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

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

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

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

Always live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.

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

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

As scarce as the truth is, the supply is always greater than the demand.

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

Building air castles is a harmless business as long as you don't attempt to live in them.

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

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

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

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

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

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.

Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.

Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.

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

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

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

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

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

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.

I am a poor man, but I have this consolation: I am poor by accident, not by design.

I don't care how much a person talks, if they only say it in a few words.

I have finally come to the conclusion that a good reliable set of bowels is worth more to man than any quanity of brains.

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.

I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.

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

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

If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We couldn't even eat hash with safety.

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

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.

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.

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

It ain't so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich.

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

It is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise.

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

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.

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

It may be risky to marry for love, but it's so honest that the Lord just has to smile on it.

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

Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

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

The best condition in life is to be not so rich as to be envied nor so poor as to be damned.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The time to pray is not when we are in a tight spot but just as soon as we get out of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

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

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

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.

Those who enter heaven may find the outer walls plastered with creeds, but they won't find any on the inside.

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

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

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

What the moral army needs just now is more rank and file and fewer brigadier generals.

When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.

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