Edgar Rice Burroughs Quotes

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

So glorious does love transfigure its object~Tarzan

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

...smiles are the foundation of beauty.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

We are between the wild thoat of certainty and the mad zitidar of fact.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

Twenty years have intervened; for ten of them I lived and fought for Dejah Thoris and her people, and for ten I have lived upon her memory.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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?

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

I have discovered that the world over, unusual weather prevails at all times of the year.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

Teach me to speak the language of men.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

p 18 - Hundreds of thousands of years ago our ancestors of the dim and distant past faced the same problems which we must face in the same primeval forest. That we are here today evidences their victory.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

P44- in tarzans clever little mind many thoughts revolved and back of these was his divine power of reason.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

You didn't find any trace of her? asked d'Arnot. // Tarzan shook his head. None. In the jungle, I could have found her; but here –-here, in civilization, a man cannot even find himself.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

Love is a strange master, and human nature is still stranger.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

Anger and hate against one we love steels our hearts, but contempt or pity leaves us silent and ashamed.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs