My top 20 highlights from the book: 

1. I go my own way, take no partners, risk nobody else’s fortune. 

2. I have had fights with some of the greatest financial men in the country. Did you ever hear of any of them getting ahead of Hetty Green?

3. A few clever men like Russell Sage, a future role model for Hetty, kept substantial amounts of cash on hand and used it to buy stocks at rock bottom prices. In future times, Hetty would always keep cash available and use it to buy when everyone else was selling. Much later, Warren Buffett would do the same. But most people watched their money wash away in the flood.

4. She used her intelligence to increase her wealth, her independence to live as she wished, and her strength to battle anyone who stood in her way.

5. I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business.

6. Across the panorama of history, the same potent forces that have driven men to war and devastation have also driven them to financial destruction. The markets may change, the methods may be revamped, but as long as human beings are propelled by greed and ego, they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

7. She paid attention when he repeated again and again that property was a trust to be taken care of and enlarged for future generations. 

8. When she had read, quizzed, grilled, interrogated, and investigated enough, when she had studied the costs, analyzed the assets, and dug through the debts, when she had found the answers to suit her, when she knew the true worth of a company and understood its weaknesses, when she was satisfied that its basic values were sound and its assets strong, that the downside risk was low and the upside high, then she invested her money.

9. She prized the life she led. “I enjoy being in the thick of things. I like to have a part in the great movements of the world and especially of this country. I like to deal with big things and with big men. My work is my amusement, and I believe it is also my duty.”

10. I have observed that many a tattered garment hides a package of bonds and that gorgeous clothing does not always cover a millionaire.

11. It was far easier to lose money than it was to make it. Even Commodore Vanderbilt had been badly hurt on September 18, 1873, the day of the crash. Most of his railroad stocks had plummeted and some of the firms he did business with were forced to close. Vanderbilt bought his stocks for cash and was able to wait out the market. But his followers, who risked their money on 10 percent margin, were racing to cover their losses. When a friend complained, he replied, “If you had bought a hundred shares instead of a thousand, you could have held on. Never be in too great a hurry to get rich.” 

12. On one occasion she trundled down with a satchel stuffed with $200,000 worth of bonds and handed them over to John Cisco. Her banker admonished her for carrying negotiable securities on public transportation. “It’s dangerous, ” he told her. “You should have taken a carriage.” Hetty shot him a look with her steely eyes and replied, “A carriage, indeed! Perhaps you can afford to ride in a carriage — I cannot.”

13. Business never disturbs me after business hours. I never worry about things. I do the best I can every day as I go along.

14. Hetty’s investments were not always known: she purchased property under fictitious names, bought stocks under other identities, and was praised by shrewd observers for how closely she held her positions.

15. Others might fritter away their time and money on the conspicuous consumption of the Gilded Age, but she had scores to settle, buildings to buy, and railroads to run.

16. She attributed her success chiefly to her basic rule: “Always buying when everyone wants to sell and selling when everyone wants to buy.”

17. New Bedford the richest city per capita in the world. But at the end of 1857, as people switched to kerosene, the price of whale oil seeped down, and the New Bedford Bank went under. Edward Robinson, who made it a practice never to borrow, kept his business buoyant.

18. Never owe anyone anything.

19. Only a small group of investors had access to as much information as Hetty did on the railroads and their maze of lines. Her transatlantic connections, her insistent research, her in-depth questioning, and her constant reading helped her decipher the complicated financial code and decide which rails to invest in and which to avoid.

20. “Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves,” she often told her children.