Edgar Rice Burroughs > Quotes

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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

“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

“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

“You are here for but an instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot Collection

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

“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 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

“Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs

“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

“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

“I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

“I still live.”
― edgar rice burroughs, John Carter of Mars

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

“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

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

“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

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

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

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

“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

“Golf is a mental disorder.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs LOST ON VENUS 1932

“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, 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