[It is an actual fact that most of us work harder, to seem happy, than we should have to, to be happy.]

[The man who never makes any blunders seldom makes any good hits.]

[A wise man never enjoys himself so much, nor a fool so little, as when alone.]

[A weak man wants as much watching as a bad.]

[Laugh every good chance you can get, but don’t laugh unless you feel like it, for there ain’t nothing in this world more hearty than a good, honest laugh, nor nothing more hollow than a heartless one.]

[Nature is a kind mother. She couldn’t well afford to make us perfect, and so she made us blind to our failings.]

[A slander is like a hornet, if you can’t kill it dead the first blow, you better not strike at it.]

[I make this distinction between character and reputation — reputation is what the world thinks of us, character is what the world knows of us.]

[Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones.]

[Advice is a drag on the market; the supply always exceeds the demand.]

[Success doesn’t consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one the second time.]

[I don’t know as I want to bet any money, and give odds, on the man who is always anxious to pray out loud, every chance he can get.]

[The most that experience seems to do for us is to show us what cussed fools everybody but we have made of themselves.]

[There would be a great supply of wit and humor in this world, if we would only give others the same credit for being witty that we claim for ourselves.]

[Before you undertake to change a man’s politics or religion, be sure you have got a better one to offer him.]

[The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.]

[As in a game of cards, so in the game of life, we must play what is dealt to us, and the glory consists, not so much in winning, as in playing a poor hand well.]

[We are happy in this world just in proportion as we make others happy.]

[It ain’t because lovers are so sensitive that they quarrel so often, it is because there is so much fun in making up.]

[There is nothing that a man can do that should cut him off from pity; the fact that he is human should always entitle him to commiseration.]

[The man who doesn’t know himself is a poor judge of the other fellow.]

[Envy is such a constant companion, that if we find no one above us to envy, we will envy those below us.]

[The truly innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves, but who think others are.]

[The truly innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves, but who think others are.]

[I never knew a man troubled with melancholy, who had plenty to do, and did it.]

[It is a darned sight easier to find six men who can tell exactly how a thing ought to be done than to find one who will do it.]

[Marrying for money is a meaner way to get it than counterfeiting.]

[Every man has a perfect right to his opinion, provided it agrees with ours.]

[Conversation should be enlivened with wit, not composed of it.]

[I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.]

[Accepting praise that is not our due is not much better than to be a receiver of stolen goods.]

[Human knowledge is very short, and doesn’t reach but a little way, and even that little way is twilight; but faith lengthens out the road, and makes it light, so that we can see to read the lettering on the milestones.]

[Experience is a grindstone, and it is lucky for us if we can get brightened by it, not ground.

This aphorism was transformed / paraphrased in the early 1920s into something a bit more inspirational, first (it appears) in Forbes (1922-10-14), then in similar form in other periodicals such as The Beaver (1924-03) and Wood Construction (1924-09-15). The new form:

Life is a grindstone, and whether it grinds a man down or polishes him up, depen's on the stuff he's made of.

In an earlier pass of Billings quotations, I did up a meme, unknowingly based on that later phrasing:

[What the world wants is good examples, not so much advice; advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.]

[The miser is a riddle. What he possesses he hasn’t got, and what he leaves behind him he never had.]

[Ignorance is the wet nurse of prejudice.]

[I don’t know of a better cure for sorrow than to pity somebody else.]

[It is a darned sight easier to find six men who can tell exactly how a thing ought to be done than to find one who will do it.]

[Human happiness consists in having what you want, and wanting what you have.]

[I love my failings. It is these that make me feel that I have that touch of nature in me that makes me brother to every man living.]

[Fortune sometimes shows us the way, but it is energy that achieves success.]

[The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old.]

[The riches man in the world is the one who despises riches the most.]

[It is not the whole of our duty to follow the examples of good men, but to leave behind us some decent tracks for others to follow.]

[If you are looking after happiness, don’t take the turnpike, take one of the byroads; you will avoid the tollgates, and find it less crowded and dusty.]

[About one-half the discomfort of this life is the result of getting tired of ourselves.]

[Is it charity to give to a thankless cuss in need? Certainly; just as much as it would be to save a drowning cow.]

[We sometimes hit a thing right the first blow, but almost always a success is the result of many failures.]

[The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sometime lay down in this world together for a few minutes, but when the lion comes to get up, the lamb will be missing.]

[There is plenty of happiness in this life if we only knew it: and one way to find it is, when we have got the old rheumatism to thank Heaven that it ain’t the old gout.]

[The best way I know of to repent of anything is to do better next time.]

[Everybody in this world wants watching, but none more than ourselves.]

[Forgiving our enemies has the same refreshing effect upon our souls as it does to confess our sins.]

[It takes a great deal of money to make a man rich, but it doesn’t take but little virtue.]

[“Experience is a good schoolmaster,” but reason is a better one.]

[I don’t believe in fighting; I am solemnly against it; but if a man gets to fighting, I am also solemnly against his getting licked. After a fight is once opened, all the virtue there is in it is to lick the other party.]

[Put not off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.]

[Fear makes everything and everybody masters over us; it is the worst slavery there is.]

[Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give, but dreadfully uneasy to take.]

[Dangers are some like a cold bath ….]

[“Familiarity breeds contempt.” This only applies to men, not to hot buckwheat slapcakes, well buttered and sugared.]

[Avarice is like a graveyard; it takes all that it can get, and gives nothing back.]

[I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am the most certain of the first time.]

[In repenting of sins, men are apt to repent of those they haven’t got, and overlook those they have.]

[Repentance should be the effect of love — not fear.]

[The first intimation I had that I was getting old was, I found myself telling to my friends the same stories over again.]

[I am satisfied that there is more weakness among men than malice.]

[A fool seems to be a person who has more will than judgment, and more vanity than either.]

[We are always a-looking ahead, and that is the way to look; if the man at the wheel looks back he will soon beach his vessel.]

[How many people there are whose importance depends entirely upon the size of their hotel bills.]

[Mankind ain’t apt to respect very much what they are familiar with; it is what we don’t know, or can’t see, that we hanker for.]

[I am just as certain that there is such a thing as “spiritual manifestations” as I am that there is plenty of superstition and trickery.]

[We are never nearer right than we are when we fear we are wrong.]

[A man may git a big foot, or a pug nose, by birthright, but nine-tenths of his virtues are the effect of association or education.]

[Confess your sorrows, your fears, your hopes, your love, and even your deviltries to men, but don’t let them get a smell of your poverty — poverty has no friends, not even among paupers.]

[Patience will tire out anything but mosquitoes.]

[The love that a man gains by flattery is worth just about as much as the flattery is.]

[“Happy as a king,” is a libel on happiness, and on the king, too.]

[There are more weak men in this world than there are wicked ones.]

[The most dangerous men we have in this world are those who are always repenting of the sins they have made up their mind to commit.]

[This has always been the rule, and always will be — no man is great unless he is good.]

[He who doesn’t love himself vents his spleen by hating everybody else.]

[Love can’t live on beauty; it must have some hash, or it will fade and die.]

[Cheerfulness makes the plainest features beautiful, the severest winter agreeable; it elevates the lowly, and adds a charm to greatness.]

[There is no man so necessary in this world, but that when he dies his place is quickly filled, and he is soon forgotten.]

[While we are poor, the necessaries of life are the luxuries; after we get rich, the luxuries are the necessaries.]

[I must respect those, I suppose, who never make any blunders, but I don’t love them.]

[It ain’t often that a man’s reputation outlasts his money.]

[The only way to please everybody is to make everybody think you are a bigger fool than they are.]

[1st Moral – Advice is good only as corroborating testimony.
2nd Moral – If you put yourself into the hands of your friends, you must expect that the kindness of their hearts is no protection against the willfulness of their judgments.
3rd Moral – Advice is like a doctor’s pills: it is often advisable to receive them without taking them.
4th Moral – One man can always milk a cow better than four can.]

[Lying is the lowest grade of sin — it is more cowardly than stealing, because there is less risk in it — it is more demoralizing than burglary, because there is no cure for it — it is more dangerous than swearing, because swearing doesn’t hurt anybody else — it was the first sin committed, because it was the easiest and most natural, and it will probably be the last one committed, because no man ever gets so poor and degraded but what he can tell quite a respectable lie.]

[About the most originality that any writer can hope to arrive at honestly, nowadays, is to steal with good judgment.]

[But since whiskey has gotten into this world, I don’t think it can be gotten out, any more than smallpox can, but it can be made comparatively harmless, in the same way, and only in the same way, and that is by constant vaccination.]

[Politeness has won more victories than logic ever has.]

[To bring up a child in the way he should go — travel that way yourself.]

[I don’t know as I want to bet any money, and give odds, on the man, who is always anxious to pray out loud, every chance he can get.]

[If we give up our minds to little things we never shall be fit for big ones. I knew a man once who could catch more flies with one swoop of his hand than anybody else could, and he wasn’t good at anything else.]

[If we would all of us take care of our own souls, and let our neighbors alone, there would be less time lost and more souls saved.]

[If there is any human being that I thoroughly loathe, it is the one who has nothing to boast of but his money — a mere pimp to his wealth.]

[Pedantry is the science of investing what little you know in one kind of perfumery, and insisting upon sticking that under every man’s nose whom you meet.]

[Politeness is often wasted, but it is a good and cheap mistake to make.]

[About one half the pity in this world is not the result of sorrow, but satisfaction that it ain’t our hoss that has his leg broke.]

[I wouldn’t undertake to correct a man’s sectarian views any quicker than I would tell him which road to take at a four corners, when I didn’t know myself which was the right one.]

[Truth don’t require the aid of elegant and high-stepping words, to express its force, or beauty; it is like water, tastes better out of a wooden bucket, than it does out of a golden goblet.]

[Too much religion is worse than none at all. You can’t show me a country that has existed yet, where the people, all of them, professed one religion and persecuted all other kinds, but what the religion ruined the country.]

[Poor human nature is too full of its own grievances to have any pity to spare, — if you show a man a big boil on your arm, he will tell you he had one twice as big as that, on the same spot, last year.]

[Give everyone you meet, my boy, the time of day and half the road, and if that don’t make him civil don’t waste any more fragrance on the cuss.]

[I don’t never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks straight is what bothers me.]

[I hope I shall never have so much reputation that I shan’t feel obliged to be always civil.]

[We are happy in this world just in proportion as we make others happy — I stand ready to bet 50 dollars on this saying.]

[Self-made men are almost always apt to be a little too proud of the job.]

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

[I hope I shall never have so much reputation, that I shan’t feel obliged to be civil.]

[To learn your offspring to steal, make them beg hard for all that you give them.]

[The time to be carefullest is when we have a hand full of trumps.]

[Old dogs nurse their grudges, but young pups fight and then frolic.]

[The chains of slavery are none the lighter for being made of gold.]

[Love is said to be blind, but I know lots of fellows in love who can see twice as much in their sweethearts as I can.]

[Mankind loves mysteries; a hole in the ground excites more wonder than a star in the heaven.]

[I don’t know of anything more remorseless on the face of the earth than 7 percent interest.]

[Whenever a minister has preached a sermon that pleases the whole congregation, he probably haz preached one that the Lord won’t endorse.]

[The man who won’t believe anything he can’t see, ain’t so wise as a mule, for they will kick at a thing in the dark.]

[Every time a man laughs he takes a kink out of the chain of life, and thus lengthens it.]

[Man is my brother, and I consider that I am nearer related to him through his vices, than I am through his virtues.]

[Laziness is a good deal like money — the more a man has of it, the more he seems to want.]

[It is one of the hardest things on earth for a man to learn — that he plays a third-rate game of whist.]

[Convince a fool of his errors, and you make him your enemy.]

[I have known people who were virtuous just because they were lazy; they hadn’t snap enough in them to break one of the Ten Commandments.]

[I believe pity is more of an impulse than a principle, for we seldom respect those that we pity.]

[He who suspects everybody should be watched by everybody.]

[Where there is one man obstinate because he is wise, there are 4,685,853 obstinate because they are ignorant.]

[But there are lots of folks who can’t see any fun in anything; you couldn’t fire a joke into them with a double-barrel gun, ten paces off; they go through life as solemn as a cow. May people think it is beneath their dignity to relish a joke; such people are simply fools, and don’t seem to know it.]

[Fun is the cheapest physic that has been discovered yet, and the easiest to take. Fun pills are sugar coated, and no change of diet is necessary while taking them. A little fun will sometimes go a great ways; I have known men to live to a good old age on one joke, which they managed to tell as often as once a day, and do all the laughing themselves besides that was done.]

[The man who has sworn not to forgive has uttered the worst oath he can take.]

[A good character is always gained by inches, but is often lost in one chunk.]

[Health is like money; we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.]

[One of the most perfect victories you can achieve over any man, is to beat him in politeness.]

[He who expects to be praised every time he does a virtuous thing will soon get tired of the business.]

[There may come a time, when the Lion and the Lamb will like down together — I shall be as glad to see it as anybody — but I am still betting on the Lion.]

[To lie about a man never hurts him, but to tell the truth about him sometimes does.]

[The quickest way to take the starch out of a man who is always blaming himself, is to agree with him; this ain’t what he is looking for.]

[There is nothing we are more apt to parade before others, than our cares and sorrows, and there is nothing the world cares so little about.]

[I think it is good taste, and also good judgement, when a man prays for the sins of the people, that he should count himself in.]

[Patience is a good thing for a man to have, but when he has got so much of it that he can fish all day, over the side of a boat, without any bait on his hook, laziness is what’s the matter of him.]

[Cats are very humble, especially just after they have committed some new kind of deviltry.]

[I don’t know which is the biggest fool, the man who can spend two hours bragging about himself, or the one who can sit patiently and listen to him.]

[It ain’t no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lay there, and grunt, is.]

[Intellect without judgment is what ails about one half the smart people in this world.]

[Philosophy is a first rate thing to have, but you can’t alleviate the gout with it, unless the gout happens to be on some other fellow.]

[Young fools are comparatively harmless; it is the old fools that make most of the trouble in this world.]

[Affter a man gets to be 38 years old he can’t form any new habits much; the bet he can do is steer his old ones.]

[Experience is a good teacher, but she is a dreadful slow one; before we get half through her lessons, the bell rings, and we are summoned to judgement.]

[I notice that when a man runs his head against a post, he cusses the post first, all creation next, and something else last, and never thinks of cussing himself.]

[It is very easy to manage our neighbors’ business, but our own sometimes bothers us.]

[Those people who are trying to get to heaven on their creed will find out at last that they didn’t have a through ticket.]

[Nature seldom makes a fool, she simply furnishes the raw materials and lets the fellow finish the job to suit himself.]

[I can’t help but respect the man who ain’t got any failings, but I don’t seem to love him; he is too different from me.]

[Be merciful to all the dumb animals — no man can ride into heaven on a sore-backed horse.]

[Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail.]

[When you have bored the bullseye, sit down, and keep still; folks will think then that you can hit it any time you have a mind to.]

[There are two men, prowling around, who want close watching: the one that is always praising, and the one who is always condemning, himself.]

[Those who retire from the world on account of its sin and peskiness must not forget that they have got to keep company with a person who wants just as much watching as anybody else.]