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.”

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

“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.”

“I loved her. I still love her, though I curse her in my sleep, so nearly one are love and hate, the two most powerful and devasting emotions that control man, nations, life.”

“Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be Vice or Virtue?”

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

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

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

“...smiles are the foundation of beauty.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Death, only, renders hope futile.”

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

“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.”

“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.”