Edgar Rice Burroughs > Quotes

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“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

“The time has arrived when patience becomes a crime and mayhem appears garbed in a manner of virtue”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs

“In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people, they have no lawyers.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

“Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise for all the riches of Barsoom. Such is love, and such are lovers wherever love is known.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

“It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal to attribute to others the misfortunes that are the result of their own wickedness.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Son of Tarzan

“I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you - forever.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Beasts of Tarzan

“Traveling through space is stupifyingly monotonous.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars

“I still live.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars

“I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“exsistance is not the cure it is the problem”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs

“Tarzan:

"Am I alive and a reality, or am I but a dream?”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Chessmen of Mars

“Captain Billings," he drawled finally, "if you will pardon my candor, I might remark that you are something of an ass, don't you know.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“Beast?" Jane murmured. "Then God make me a beast; for, man or beast, I am yours.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Gods of Mars

“I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many hours later.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

“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-”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan

“I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine. We live here together always in my house. I will bring you the best of fruits, the tenderest deer, the finest meats that roam the jungle. I will hunt for you. I am the greatest of the jungle fighters. I will fight for you. I am the mightiest of the jungle fighters. You are Jane Porter, I saw it in your letter. When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled, and smiles are the foundation of beauty.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“If people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories just as rotten.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs

“(..)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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs

“[The little black boy] had seen Tarzan bring down a buck, just as Numa, the lion, might have done... Tibo had shuddered at the sight, but he had thrilled, too, and for the first time there entered his dull, Negroid mind a vague desire to emulate his savage foster parent. But Tibo, the little black boy, lacked the divine spark which had permitted Tarzan, the white boy, to benefit by his training in the ways of the fierce jungle. In imagination he was wanting, and imagination is but another name for super-intelligence.

Imagination it is which builds bridges, and cities, and empires. The beasts know it not, the blacks only a little, while to one in a hundred thousand of earth's dominant race it is given as a gift from heaven that man may not perish from the earth.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jungle Tales of Tarzan (Tarzan, #6)

“...my civilization is not even skin deep - it does not go deeper than my clothes.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The People That Time Forgot

“Emerging, as we had, from the dark and gloomy bowels of the earth, the scene before us presented a view of wondrous beauty, and, while doubtless enhanced by contrast, it was nevertheless such an aspect as is seldom given to the eyes, of a Barsoomian of today to view. To me it seemed a little garden spot upon a dying world preserved from an ancient era when Barsoom was young and meteorological conditions were such as to favor the growth of vegetation that has since become extinct over practically the entire area of the planet. In this deep valley, surrounded by lofty cliffs, the atmosphere doubtless was considerably denser than upon the surface of the planet above. The sun's days were reflected by the lofty escarpment, which must also hold the heat during the colder periods of night, and, in addition to this, there was ample water for irrigation which nature might easily have achieved through percolation of the waters of the river through and beneath the top soil of the valley.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Fighting Man of Mars

“...it was his misfortune that most of the men he knew preferred immaculate linen and their clubs to nakedness and the jungle. It was, of course, difficult to understand, yet it was very evident that they did.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan

“...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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan

“The more one knows of one's religion the less one believes - no one living knows more of mine than I.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan