Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.
More quotes from 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.
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Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
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Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.
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Don’t ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.
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There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won’t.
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It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.
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As a general thing, when a woman wears the pants in a family, she has a good right to them.
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Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.
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The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.
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Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail.
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Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.
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Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.
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When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.
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It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.
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Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.
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There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.
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I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.
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Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.
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Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been getting a little lower ever since.
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Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
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The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so.
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One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.
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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.
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Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.
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There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.
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About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.
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Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.
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The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.
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Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.
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It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient.
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It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.
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As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
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Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
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There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying.
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The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.
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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.
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Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain’t got.
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The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain’t gout.
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Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
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Woman’s influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.
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If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We could not even eat hash with any safety.
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The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
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A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates.
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Every man has his follies – and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
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Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.
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The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.
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Remember the poor, it costs nothing.
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Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
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Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
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A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.
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There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
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One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.
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If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.
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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.
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One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.
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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.
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It ain’t often that a man’s reputation outlasts his money.
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There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.
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Life is short, but it’s long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.
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Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it.
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Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can’t suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.
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Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.
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A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.
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I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.
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About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
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Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.
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Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
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Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn’t be any fun living in it, or profit.
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To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
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There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.
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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.
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Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
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Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
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Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.
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No one can disgrace us but ourselves.
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There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.
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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.
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Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.
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The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.
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There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.
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