Echoes

Basically, price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.

The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.

Our favorite holding period is forever.

Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.

All the real money in investment will have to be made—as most of it has been in the past— not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.

Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

The investor's chief problem — and even his worst enemy — is likely to be himself.

Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.

More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.

To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

He plants trees whose shade another age will enjoy.

All is ephemeral — fame and the famous as well.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

...if you are nothing but profit-conscious, you cannot see the opportunities ahead.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

The fashion of this world passeth away and I would fain occupy myself with the things that are abiding.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.