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It is a great deal easier for a man to find a pedigree to fit his virtues than virtues to fit his pedigree.

Josh Billings

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Josh Billings
Age: 67 †
Born: 1818
Born: April 21
Died: 1885
Died: October 14
Humorist
Writer
Lanesboro
Massachusetts
Henry Wheeler Shaw
Fit
Deal
Easier
Deals
Virtue
Find
Great
Pedigree
Men
Virtues

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If a man is right, he can't be too radical if he is wrong, he can't be too conservative.
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Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.
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The trouble with most folks isn't their ignorance. It's knowin' so many things that ain't so.
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As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness our bad luck we give the gods credit for.
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Nature makes all the noblemen wealth, education, or pedigree never made one yet.
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Silence is said to be golden, but the best fools the world has ever produced had nothing to say on the subject
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[Science is] the literature of truth.
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One legged chickens, I know, are the least apt to scratch a garden.
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Method is the arithmetic of success.
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Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.
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Silence never makes any blunders.
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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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Ambition is like hunger it obeys no law but its appetite
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Pedigrees seldom improve by age the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.
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Friendship is like earthenware, once broken, it can be mended love is like a mirror, once broken that ends it.
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As the flint contains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can awaken to life, so adversity often reveals to us hidden gems, which prosperity or negligence would forever have hidden.
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Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates.
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There is only one good substitute for the endearments of a sister, and that is the endearments of some other fellow's sister.
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There is gravity in wisdom, but no particular wisdom in gravity.
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It is easy to assume a habit but when you try to cast it off, it will take skin and all.
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