Echoes

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

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

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

If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

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.

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.

Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

A person who is said to be proficient at the arts is like a fool. Because of his foolishness in concerning himself with just one thing, he thinks of nothing else and thus becomes proficient.

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

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That — with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.

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

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Life is too short to waste The critic bite or cynic bark, Quarrel, or reprimand; ’Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

He plants trees whose shade another age will enjoy.

The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.

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.