Quotes from Josh Billings

Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.

About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

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

A man cannot learn to be wise any more than he can learn to be handsome.

Pride seems tew be quite equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem tew have it just alike.

Men who have much to say use the fewest words.

The man who has never been tempted doesn't know how dishonest he is.

Men of genius are like eagles, they live on what they kill, while men of talents are like crows, they live on what has been killed for them.

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

The very thing that men think they have got the most of, they have got the least of; and that is judgment.

Knowledge is like money, the more a man gits the more he hankers for.

When a man makes up his mind to become a rascal, he should examine himself closely and see if he isn't better constructed for a fool.

I called my cat William because no shorter name fits the dignity of his character. Poor old man, he has fits now, so I call him Fitz-William.

True valor is like honesty; it enters into all that a man sees and does.

A man running for office puts me in mind of a dog that's lost-he smells everybody he meets, and wags himself all over.

It ain't no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lie there and grunt is.

Every man should know something of law; if he knows enough to keep out of it, he is a pretty good lawyer.

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

The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.

Marrying a woman for her money is very much like setting a rat-trap, and baiting it with your own finger.

You should always live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.

Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates.

Poverty is the step-mother of genius.