Josh Billings (1818–85,) pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw, was an American humorist. His philosophical remarks, published as newspaper articles, books, and comic lectures, were widely popular after the Civil War, perhaps second only to Mark Twain. Shaw’s reputation has not endured so well with later generations.
Born in Lanesboro, Massachusetts, Shaw tried various livelihoods before becoming an auctioneer and a land agent in Poughkeepsie, New York. At age forty-five, he started contributing humorous columns to a local newspaper under the name “Josh Billings.” They didn’t appeal until he altered his style and began using phonetic spelling to signify a rural dialect. He changed an article he had written as “Essay on the Mule” to “A Essa on the Meul bi Josh Billings”—this was printed in a New York City newspaper and made him immediately well known.
A popular newspaper columnist, Shaw published lighthearted almanacs and collections of wisecracks. He relied heavily on purposeful misspelling, fractured grammar, malapropisms, futile logic, and anticlimax. This technique was widespread among contemporaneous comic writers who assumed the role of “cracker-barrel philosophers.”
Shaw’s popular books included Josh Billings, His Sayings (1866,) Josh Billings on Ice (1868,) Josh Billings’ Farmers’ Allminax (1870,) Everybody’s Friend (1874,) Josh Billings’ Trump Kards (1877,) Old Probability: Perhaps Rain—Perhaps Not (1879,) and Josh Billings Struggling with Things (1881.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Be like a postage stamp – stick to one thing until you get there.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Endurance, Resolve, Perseverance
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Wisdom
Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one the second time.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Success
If it wasn’t for faith, there would be no living in this world; we couldn’t even eat hash with any safety.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Belief, Faith
Prejudice assumes the garb of reason, but the cheat is too thin.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Prejudice
Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Procrastination
Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Weakness
Poverty is the step-mother of genius.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: The Poor, Poverty
It ain’t so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Gratitude, Appreciation, Wealth, Blessings
The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
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.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Health is like munny, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Health
Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Advice
The trouble with most folks ain’t so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain’t so.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Knowledge
Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Vanity
The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Ignorance
It’s not what we don’t know that prevents us from succeeding; it’s what we know that just ain’t so that is our greatest obstacle.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Now, Great
In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Age, Difficulty, Youth, Aging
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way—yourself once in a while.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Children, Parenting
The man who ain’t got an enemy is really poor.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Enemy
It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Forgiveness
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 (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Riches, Wealth
The more ideas a man has the fewer words he takes to express them. Wise men never talk to make time; they talk to save it.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Talking
One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Victory
There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won’t.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Fools, Foolishness
It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; we can dodge a elephant, but we can’t dodge a fly.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Worry
It ain’t no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lie there and grunt is.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Failures, Mistakes
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 (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Honesty
There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
One-half the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Problems
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