Edgar Rice Burroughs Quotes

To Jane the strange apparition of this god-like man was as wine to sick nerves.

Bowen!" she cried. "Your knife!

Fortunate indeed are those in which there is combined a little good and a little bad, a little knowledge of many things outside their own callings, a capacity for love and a capacity for hate, for such as these can look with tolerance upon all, unbiased by the egotism of him whose head is so heavy on one side that all his brains run to that point.

the countless unnamed jewels of Mars,

But this I do know that since you have told me that ten years have elapsed since I departed from this earth I have lost all respect for time - I am commencing to doubt that such a thing exists other than in the weak, finite mind of man.

Lives there upon any world such another as John Carter, Prince of Helium? Lives there another man who could fight his way back and forth across a warlike planet, facing savage beasts and hordes of savage men, for the love of a woman?

It must be that I am dreaming, and that I shall awaken in a moment to see that awful knife descending toward my heart- kiss me, dear, just once before I lose my dream forever.
-Jane-

Why, I never did believe it,

Exsistance is not the cure it is the problem

The more one listens to ordinary conversations the more apparent it becomes that the reasoning faculties of the brain take little part in the direction of the vocal organs.

Men were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the jungle! How fortunate was he who lived in the peace and security of the great forest!

All he knew was that he could not eat the flesh of this black man, and thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence he was ignorant.

Even brave men, and D'Arnot was a brave man, are sometimes frightened by solitude.

In absolute and general perfection lies stifling monotony and death. Nature must have contrasts; she must have shadows as well as highlights; sorrow with happiness; both wrong and right; and sin as well as virtue.

For a time Jack was angry; but when he had been without the jacket for a short while he began to realize that being half-clothed is infinitely more uncomfortable than being entirely naked. Soon he did not miss his clothing in the least, and from that he came to revel in the freedom of his unhampered state.

At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain. Let us pity them, my chieftain, for even though we die at their hands we can afford them pity, since we are greater than they and they know it

The more one knows of one's religion the less one believes - no one living knows more of mine than I.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago our ancestors of the dim and distant past faced the same problems which we must face, possibly in these same primeval forests. That we are here today evidences their victory.
What they did may we not do? And even better, for are we not armed with ages of superior knowledge, and have we not the means of protection, defense, and sustenance which science has given us, but of which they were totally ignorant? What they accomplished, Alice, with instruments and weapons of stone and bone, surely that may we accomplish also.

In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people, they have no lawyers.

I never knew my father, my mother was an ape

I wish to Heaven that I might forget. It would be so much easier than to go through life always remembering what might have been.

My mind is evidently so constituted that I am subconsciously forced into the path of duty without recourse to tiresome mental processes.

As much as I enjoy a fight, I cannot always indulge myself, and just now I had more weighty matters to occupy my time than spilling the blood of strange warriors.

Your Paris is more dangerous than my savage jungles, Paul," concluded Tarzan,

Jane saw the little note and ignored it, for she was very angry and hurt and mortified, but - she was a woman, and so eventually she picked it up and read it. MY

This was life! Ah, how he loved it! Civilization held nothing like this in its narrow and circumscribed sphere, hemmed in by restrictions and conventionalities. Even clothes were a hindrance and a nuisance. At last he was free. He had not realized what a prisoner he had been.

I fear that there is something more serious than accident here, Mr. Brently, said the captain.

(..)how a force of six or eight fight­ing men could have done so un­ob­served is be­yond me. We shall soon know, how­ev­er, for here comes the roy­al psy­chol­ogist.

And yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever;

Tarzan of the Apes was hungry, and here was meat; meat of the kill, which jungle ethics permitted him to eat. How may we judge him, by what standards, this ape-man with the heart and head and body of an English gentleman, and the training of a wild beast? Tublat, whom he had hated and who had hated him, he had killed in a fair fight, and yet never had the thought of eating Tublat's flesh entered his head. It would have been as revolting to him as is cannibalism to us. But who was Kulonga that he might not be eaten as fairly as Horta, the boar, or Bara, the deer? Was he not simply another of the countless wild things of the jungle who preyed upon one another to satisfy the cravings of hunger?

THE JOHN CARTER OF MARS COLLECTION ..................

It never seems to occur to some people, that, like beauty, a sense of humor may sometimes be fatal.

I presume that it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible.

but on Barsoom no man lies; if he does not wish to speak the truth he is silent.

One does not judge the gazelle by the lions that attack it

It was on the morning of the second day that the first link was forged in what was destined to form a chain of circumstances ending in a life for one then unborn such as has never been paralleled in the history of man.

Like its master, it was entirely devoid of hair, but was of a dark slate color and exceeding smooth and glossy. Its belly was white, and its legs shaded from the slate of its shoulders and hips to a vivid yellow at the feet. The feet themselves were heavily padded and nailless, which fact had also contributed to the noiselessness of their approach, and, in common with a multiplicity of legs, is a characteristic feature of the fauna of Mars. The highest type of man and one other animal, the only mammal existing on Mars, alone have well-formed nails, and there are absolutely no hoofed animals in existence there.

And could she love where she feared?

Mine own people do not care for me, John Carter; I am too unlike them. It is a sad fate, since I must live my life amongst them.

And so he learned to read. From then on his progress was rapid.

In his savage, untutored breast new emotions were stirring. He could not fathom them. He wondered why he felt so great an interest in these people - why he had gone to such pains to save the three men. But he did not wonder why he had torn Sabor from the tender flesh of the strange girl.
Surely the men were stupid and ridiculous and cowardly. Even Manu, the monkey, was more intelligent than they. If these were creatures of his own kind he was doubtful if his past pride in blood was warranted.
But the girl, ah - that was a different matter. He did not reason here. He knew that she was created to be protected, and that he was created to protect her

There was one slight, desperate chance, and that I decided I must take
it was for Dejah Thoris, and no man has lived who would not risk a thousand deaths for such as she.

I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, "Tarzan and the Lost Empire", there are 31 books on my list.

I loved her. I still love her, though I curse her in my sleep, so nearly one are love and hate, the two most powerful and devasting emotions that control man, nations, life.

I took her in my arms and kissed her.
And thus in the midst of a city of wild conflict, filled with the alarms of war; with death and destruction reaping their terrible harvest around her, did Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, true daughter of Mars, the God of War, promise herself in marriage to John Carter, Gentleman of Virginia.

Tut, tut! I have often admonished my pupils to count ten before speaking. Were I you, Mr. Philander, I should count at least a thousand, and then maintain a discreet silence.

His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.

So this was love! I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed the five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful women and urging opportunity; in spite of a half-desire for love and a constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall furiously and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world, of a species similar possibly, yet not identical with mine.

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

As you know I am not of Barsoom; your ways are not my ways, and I can only act in the future as I have in the past, in accordance with the dictates of my conscience and guided by the standards of mine own people.

Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so

As a matter of fact I presume I gave little attention to seeking an excuse, for I love a good fight too well to need any other reason for joining in when one is afoot. So

Unfailing courtesy and willingness to be of service.

Seizing a cudgel from the nearest priest, he laid about him like a veritable demon as he forged his rapid way toward the altar. The hand of La had paused at the first noise of interruption. When she saw who the author of it was she went white. She had never been able to fathom the secret of the strange white man's escape from the dungeon in which she had locked him.

I am glad," he said, "that I do not dwell in your country among such savage peoples. Here, in Caspak, men fight with men when they meet - men of different races - but their weapons are first for the slaying of beasts in the chase and defense. We do not fashion weapons solely for the killing of man as do your peoples. Your country must indeed be a savage country, from which you are fortunate to have escaped to the peace and security of Caspak.

They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality.

As he dropped the last grisly fragment of the dismembered and mutilated body into the small vat of nitric acid that was to devour every trace of the horrid evidence which might easily send him to the gallows, the man sank weakly into a chair and throwing his body forward upon his great, teak desk buried his face in his arms, breaking into dry, moaning sobs.

We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod.

Subconscious minds are no less fallible than the objective mind.

You are here for but an instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously

I am like my father - witless in matters of the heart, and of a poor way with women; yet the jewels that strew these royal garden paths - the trees, the flowers, the sward - all must have read the love that has filled my heart since first my eyes were made new by imaging your perfect face and form; so how could you alone have been blind to it?

We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.

Give a Martian woman a chance and death must take a back seat.

the bridesmaid's hand in his, "Hazel and I think it would be ripping to make it a double wedding." The

John!" cried Lady Greystoke, running toward him, "how could I have been mistaken? I-" but the rest of the sentence was lost as Tarzan of the Apes sprang into the room and taking his mate in his arms covered her lips with kisses.

Those features are burned so deep into my memory and my heart that I should recognize them anywhere in the world from among a thousand others, who might appear identical to any one but me.

Beast?" Jane murmured. "Then God make me a beast; for, man or beast, I am yours.

P33- the son of an english lord and an english lady nursed at the breast of kala, the great ape.

She realized the spell that had been upon her in the depths of that far-off jungle, but there was no spell of enchantment now in prosaic Wisconsin.

If your vocation be shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and you can do one or the other better than your fellows, then you are a fool if you are not proud of your ability. And so I am very proud that upon two planets no greater fighter has ever lived than John Carter, Prince of Helium.

So glorious does love transfigure its object"~Tarzan

I should at least die as I had lived - fighting.

If I sometimes seem to take too great pride in my fighting ability, it must be remembered that fighting is my vocation.

I loathed poverty and I would have liked to put my hands on the party who said that poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing honorable or fine about it.

I understand that you belittle all sentiments of generosity and kindness, but I do not, and I can convince your most doughty warrior that these characteristics are not incompatible with an ability to fight.

[..] it has remained for man alone among all creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the mere pleasure of inflicting suffering and death.

I had aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus; unquestionably the all-time cosmic record for poor shots.

The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished us to believe.

There was but a single forlorn hope, and I took it.

Whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to serve you than not.

There is much which I have left out; much which I have not dared to tell; but you will find the story of his second search for Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, even more remarkable than was his first

As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his lifelong enemy and, raising his eyes to the full moon, threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible cry of his people.

In that little party there was not one who would desert another; yet we were of different countries, different colours, different races, different religions
and one of us was of a different world.

Later, Thuran also found it necessary to construct a similar primitive garment, so that, with their bare legs and heavily bearded faces, they looked not unlike reincarnations of two prehistoric progenitors of the human race. Thuran acted like one.

walled fields and low, rambling buildings, presenting

The scene he witnessed there in the twilight depths of the African jungle was burned forever into the Englishman's brain.

Yes, your man, Jane Porter. Your savage, primeval man come out of the jungle to claim his mate--the woman who ran away from him," he added almost fiercely.

It is strange how new and unexpected conditions bring out unguessed ability to meet them.

If man spoke only when he had something worth while to say and said that as quickly as possible, ninety-eight per cent of the human race might as well be dumb, thereby establishing a heavenly harmony from pate to tonsil.

Kho closed and sought my jugular with his teeth. He seemed to forget the hatchet dangling by

Golf is a mental disorder.

I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand.

I feel always that I am a prisoner.

I had learned from Kantos Kan the secret of opening these gates, and in another moment my twenty great fighting men stood within the doomed city of Zodanga.

The things which the Stygian darkness hid from my objective eye could not have been half so wonderful as the pictures which my imagination wrought as it conjured to life again the ancient peoples of this dying world and set them once more to the labours, the intrigues, the mysteries and the cruelties which they had practised to make their last stand against the swarming hordes of the dead sea bottoms that had driven them step by step to the uttermost pinnacle of the world where they were now intrenched behind an impenetrable barrier of superstition.

The one on whom all responsibility rests is apt to endure the most.

Clothes therefore, must be the insignia of the superiority of man over all other animals, for surely there could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things

With man it is different. When he comes many of the larger animals instinctively leave the district entirely, seldom if ever to return; and thus it has always been with the great anthropoids. They flee man as man flees a pestilence.

I do not think that I am ever overconfident. I am merely wholly confident, and I maintain that there is all the difference in the world there.

There was no need for words - at least none that I could imagine, unless Perry desired to pray. And I was quite sure that he would,