A Princess of Mars: A Barsoom Novel (Modern Library Classics)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.

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

“Why, oh, why will you not learn to live in amity with your fellows, must you ever go on down the ages to your final extinction but little above the plane of the dumb brutes that serve you! A people without written language, without art, without homes, without love; the victims of eons of the horrible community idea.

Owning everything in common, even to your women and children, has resulted in your owning nothing in common. You hate each other as you hate all else except yourselves. Come back to the ways of our common ancestors, come back to the light of kindliness and fellowship.

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.”