Josh Billings (1818 – 1885)
Better known by his pen name Josh Billings, was an American humorist.
The man who kan ware a paper collar a hole week and keap, it klean, aint fit for enny thing else.
I am poor, and I am glad that i am, for i find that wealth makes more people mean than it duz generous.
Love haz a most vorashus appetight, but a poor digestion, what it feeds on most alwus distresses it. Prudes, are coquets, gone to seed. It iz our duty tew pray for them who revile and persekute us, but i dont kno az we are obliged tew let them kno it.
7 per cent haz no rest, nor no religion, it works nights, and Sundays, and even wet days.
I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.
The wheel that squeaks the loudest
Is the one that gets the grease.
Menny people spend their time trieing tew find the hole whare sin got into this world--if two men brake through the ice into a mill pond, they had better hunt for sum good hole tew git out, rather than git into a long argument about the hole they cum tew fall in.
Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it.
I wouldn't undertake tew korrekt a mans sektarian views enny quicker than i would tell him which road tew take at a 4 corners, when i didn't know miself which waz the right one.
I rather admire the insolent civility ov a bull-tarrier, who only growls when i pass by him, but i never did like it in a man.
I dont never hav enny trouble in regulating mi own kondukt, but tew keep other pholks straight iz what bothers me.
Genuine grief iz like penitence, not klamorous but subdued; sorrow from the hous tops and penitence in a market place shows more ambishun than piety.
Misanthropy don't pay--thare aint no man living whoze hate the world cares one cuss for.
I don't kno az i want tew bet enny money, and giv odds, on the man, who iz alwus anxious tew pray out loud, every chance he kan git.
Natur duz awl her big and little jobs without making enny furse; the earth goes around the sun, the moon changes, the eklipses, and the pollywog, silently and taillessly, bekums a frog, but man kant even deliver a small-sized 4th ov July orashun without knocking down a mountain or two, and tareing up three or four primeval forests by the bleeding rutes.
Poverty is the stepmother of genius.
I hate grate talkers; i had rather hav a swarm of bees lite onto me.
There iz no more real satisfackshun, in laying up in yure buzzum an injury than thare iz in stuffing a dead hornet, who haz stung you, and keeping him tew look at.
Take awl the prophecys that hav cum tew pass, and awl that hav caught on the center, and failed tew cum tew time, and make them up in an average, and yer will find, that buying stock, on the Codfish Bank ov Nufoundland, at 50 per cent, for a rise, iz, in comparison, a good spekulatiff bizziness.
When i see a poor, and proud aristokrat, purtiklar about punktillio, he alwus puts me in mind ov a drunken man, trieing tew walk a crack.