Leadership Quote by Josh Billings

Anxiety gets dunked on here with the smile of a man who knows his audience too well. Billings, a 19th-century American humorist who built a career on plainspoken aphorisms, takes aim at the busywork of worry: the kind that feels like preparation but is really just premature suffering. The punch is in the bookkeeping. If you "anticipate trouble", you can rack up an impressive inventory of grief without the inconvenience of actual events. It is miserliness and indulgence at once: hoarding fear, spending it early.

The line works because it reframes a private habit as a perverse leisure activity. "Manage to enjoy" is the sly twist. Enjoyment usually implies choice, even pleasure; Billings yokes it to "sorrows" to expose how self-protective pessimism can become self-rewarding. There is status in being the one who saw disaster coming, a little moral superiority in saying, I knew it. Billings punctures that by pointing out the cost: you pay emotional interest on debts that never come due.

Context matters. Billings wrote in an era of sermon-y self-improvement and stiff social codes, using folksy comedy to smuggle critique past respectability. His intent isn't clinical advice; it's social correction. He's telling the chronically worried: your vigilance isn't wisdom, it's a hobby that keeps you from living.