Josh Billings

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

Humorist and lecturer Josh Billings

Josh Billings was the pen name of humorist born Henry Wheeler Shaw (20 April 1818 – 14 October 1885). He was perhaps the second most famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States in the second half of the 19th century after Mark Twain, although his reputation has not fared so well with later generations.

Shaw was born in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, and worked as a farmer, coal miner, explorer, and auctioneer before he began making a living as a journalist and writer in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1858. Under the pseudonym "Josh Billings" he wrote in an informal voice full of the slang of the day, with often eccentric phonetic spelling, dispensing wit and folksy common-sense wisdom. His books include Farmers' Allminax, Josh Billings' Sayings, Everybody's Friend, Choice Bits of American Wit and Josh Billings' Trump Kards.

His quote "In the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money can not buy... to wit the wag of a dog's tail" appears at the beginning of the Disney film Lady and the Tramp.^[1]

He toured, giving lectures of his writings, which were very popular with the audiences of the day.

Billings died in Monterey, California.

Billings' death is described in Chapter 12 of John Steinbeck's fictional Cannery Row. According to Steinbeck's homage, Billings died in the the Hotel del Monte in Monterey after which his body was delivered for burial preparation by the local constable to the town's only doctor, who also doubled as an amateur mortician. The doctor, per his usual embalming protocol, dispensed of Billings' entrails by tossing them into the gulch behind his house before packing the torso with sawdust. The stomach, liver and intestines were found in the gulch the following morning by a dog whose master, a small boy, intended on using them for fish bait. Some local men, realizing the disgrace this could bring to Monterey -- a town proud of its literary heritage -- were able to stop the boy as he was preparing to row out to sea, retrieved the "tripas" and forced the doctor to give Billings' organs a proper burial befitting a great author.

Attributed quotations

While the Squeaky Wheel analysis was used in different forms before Billings, his poem, "The Kicker" brought the idiom into common usage of American language. The term "kicker" at the time in the 1800s was another term for a complainer. The poem is:

I hate to be a kicker,

I always long for peace,

But the wheel that does the squeaking,

Is the one that gets the grease.

• A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.

• About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

• As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

• Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.

• Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.

• Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.

• It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those we intend to commit.

• It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowing so darned much that ain't so.

• Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

• Genius ain’t nothing more than elegant common sense

• One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.

• Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

• The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.

• The time to pray is not when we are in a tight spot but just as soon as we get out of it.

• There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

• Man is my brother, and I am nearer related to him through his vices than I am through his virtue.

• Friendship is liken earthenware, once broken it can be mended. Love is like a mirror, once broken that ends it.

• Occasions are rare; and those who know how to seize upon them are rarer.

• It strains a man's philosophy the worst kind to laugh when he gets beat.

• Don't have any more secrets than you can keep yourself.

• That, 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.

• Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

• One legged chickens, I know, are the least apt to scratch a garden.

• I have finally come to the conclusion that a good set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains.

• Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been getting a little lower ever since.

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

• I wud as soon take a ten dollar kounterfit bill on the Kodfish Bank ov Nufoundland, as tu marry a woman with false hare, false teeth or a false buzzum.

• There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, but I am still betting on the lion.

• Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.

References

Billings, Josh. Choice Bits of American Wit. Diprose, Bateman & Co.. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Josh Billings

Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Josh Billings.

• http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/eaf/authors/hws.htm
• http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Josh_Billings/
• The Great Josh Billings Runaground Triathlon