Quotes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

“I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.”

“I write to escape ... to escape poverty.”

And so, in silence, we walked the surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.I loved Dejah Thoris. The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved her since the first moment my eyes had met hers that first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad.

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

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

So glorious does love transfigure its object~Tarzan

...smiles are the foundation of beauty.

Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.

I do not understand exactly what you mean by fear, said Tarzan. Like lions, fear is a different thing in different men, but to me the only pleasure in the hunt is the knowledge that the hunted thing has power to harm me as much as I have to harm him. If I went out with a couple of rifles and a gun bearer, and twenty or thirty beaters, to hunt a lion, I should not feel that the lion had much chance, and so the pleasure of the hunt would be lessened in proportion to the increased safety which I felt.Then I am to take it that Monsieur Tarzan would prefer to go naked into the jungle, armed only with a jackknife, to kill the king of beasts, laughed the other good naturedly, but with the merest touch of sarcasm in his tone.And a piece of rope, added Tarzan.

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.

What--has O-Tar seen an ulsio and fainted? demanded I-Gos with broad sarcasm.Men have died for less than that, ancient one, E-Thas reminded him.I am safe, retorted I-Gos, for I am not a brave and popular son of the jeddak of Manator.

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

P33- the wail of the living had answered the call of universal motherhood within her wild beast which the dead could not still.

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.

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.

He longed for the little cabin and the sun-kissed sea - for the cool interior of the well-built house, and for the never-ending wonders of the many books.

To lose the only creature in all his world who ever had manifested love and affection for him was the greatest tragedy he had ever known.

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

What are you Tarzan? he asked aloud. An ape or a man? If you are an ape, you will do as the apes do - leave one of your kind in the jungle to die if it suited your whim to go elsewhere.If you are a man, you will return to protect your kind. You will not run away from one of your own people, because one has run away from you.

As a mistress, death seemed lacking in many essentials. Therefore, I decided not to die.