Josh Billings Quotes

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

It must be a good thing to be good or ivrybody wudden't be pretendin' he was.

Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.

The virtuous will be sure to speak uprightly; but those whose speech is upright may not be virtuous.

When calling for authenticity, we need to take seriously the brokenness and sinfulness of the human heart. If to be authentic means to be who we really are or to express what we really feel, then in most cases I’m going to vote for hypocrisy. Our prisons are filled with men and women who acted on their feelings and impulses. If authenticity is about being true to yourself, these individuals should be our models of inspiration.

He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked. The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.

Virtue is safe only when it is inspired.

It will not do to be saints at meeting and sinners everywhere else.

It is all a mistake that we cannot be good and manly without being scrupulously and studiously good. There is too much mechanism about our virtue.

Deliberate virtue is never worth much: The virtue of feeling or habit is the thing.

If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.

How wholesome winter is, seen far or near; how good, above all mere sentimental, warm-blooded, short-lived, soft-hearted, moral goodness, commonly so called. Give me the goodness which has forgotten its own deeds,--which God has seen to be good, and let be.

We're all hypocrites. We all say one thing and do another. But why don't we try to do what we say more than what we don't?

Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.

Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.

Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

A knight whose heart is set upon the Way, but who is ashamed of wearing shabby clothes and eating coarse food, is not worth calling into counsel.

The true gentleman does not preach what he practices till he has practiced what he preaches.

Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn't quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?

If you want to know if I'm a Godly man, follow me home.

The world is ashamed of being virtuous.

Integrity is the first step to true greatness.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.