There is a sort of charm in ugliness, if the person has some redeeming qualities and is only ugly enough.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Charm
To enjoy a good reputation give publicly, and steal privately.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Charity
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: Wealth, Blessings, Gratitude, Appreciation
Never run into debt, not if you can find anything else to run into.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Debt
Experience is a school where a man learns what a big fool he has been.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Experience
It ain’t often that a man’s reputation outlasts his money.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Reputation
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Adversity, Blessings, Silver Linings, Weight
There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Memories, Memory
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.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Business
The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Complaining, Pessimism, Complaints
Confess your sins to the Lord, and you will be forgiven; confess them to men, and you will be laughed at.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Sin
Pity costs nothing and ain’t worth nothing.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Service, Sympathy
No one can disgrace us but ourselves.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Self-Esteem, Self Respect
I am a poor man, but I have this consolation: I am poor by accident, not by design.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Poverty, The Poor
Poverty is the step-mother of genius.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: The Poor, Poverty
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
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: One liners, Silence, Arguments
The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his way.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Fools, Foolishness
It is always safe to follow the religious belief that our mother taught us; there never was a mother yet who taught her child to be an infidel.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
There is a significant Latin proverb; to wit: Who will guard the guards?
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Caution
Most everyone seems willing to be a fool himself, but he can’t bear to have anyone else one.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Hypocrisy
There’s lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven’t the time to enjoy it.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Health
The man who ain’t got an enemy is really poor.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Enemy
As a general thing, when the woman wears the pants in the family, she has a good right to them.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Marriage
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
Always live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Debt
In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Age, Aging, Youth, Difficulty
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
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Topics: Laughter, Feelings
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Mark Twain American Humorist
- Thomas Masson American Journalist
- Bill Bryson American Humorist
- Garrison Keillor American Broadcaster, Writer
- S. J. Perelman American Humorist
- Robert Quillen American Journalist
- Leo Rosten American Humorist
- Sam Levenson American Humorist
- Charles Farrar Browne (Artemus Ward) American Humorist
- Andy Rooney American Writer
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