Edgar Rice Burroughs

Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.

— 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

I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

On the fifth day following the murder of the ship's officers, land was sighted by the lookout. Whether island or mainland, Black Michael did not know, but he announced to Clayton that if investigation showed that the place was habitable he and Lady Greystoke were to be put ashore with their belongings.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

That night a little son was born in the tiny cabin beside the primeval forest, while a leopard screamed before the door, and the deep notes of a lion's roar sounded from beyond the ridge. Lady Greystoke never recovered from the shock of the great ape's attack, and, though she lived for a year after her baby was born, she was never again outside the cabin, nor did she ever fully realize that she was not in England.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

In his leisure Clayton read, often aloud to his wife, from the store of books he had brought for their new home. Among these were many for little children — picture books, primers, readers — for they had known that their little child would be old enough for such before they might hope to return to England.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Kala was the youngest mate of a male called Tublat, meaning broken nose, and the child she had seen dashed to death was her first; for she was but nine or ten years old.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

High up among the branches of a mighty tree she hugged the shrieking infant to her bosom, and soon the instinct that was as dominant in this fierce female as it had been in the breast of his tender and beautiful mother — the instinct of mother love — reached out to the tiny man-child's half-formed understanding, and he became quiet.Then hunger closed the gap between them, and the son of an English lord and an English lady nursed at the breast of Kala, the great ape.

— 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

Tenderly Kala nursed her little waif, wondering silently why it did not gain strength and agility as did the little apes of other mothers. It was nearly a year from the time the little fellow came into her possession before he would walk alone, and as for climbing — my, but how stupid he was!

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

In Tarzan's clever little mind many thoughts revolved, and back of these was his divine power of reason. If he could catch his fellow apes with his long arm of many grasses, why not Sabor, the lioness?

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Among other things he found a sharp hunting knife, on the keen blade of which he immediately proceeded to cut his finger. Undaunted he continued his experiments, finding that he could hack and hew splinters of wood from the table and chairs with this new toy.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

The boats, and trains, and cows and horses were quite meaningless to him, but not quite so baffling as the odd little figures which appeared beneath and between the colored pictures — some strange kind of bug he thought they might be, for many of them had legs though nowhere could he find one with eyes and a mouth. It was his first introduction to the letters of the alphabet, and he was over ten years old.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

His little face was tense in study, for he had partially grasped, in a hazy, nebulous way, the rudiments of a thought which was destined to prove the key and the solution to the puzzling problem of the strange little bugs. In his hands was a primer opened at a picture of a little ape similar to himself, but covered, except for hands and face, with strange, colored fur, for such he thought the jacket and trousers to be. Beneath the picture were three little bugs — BOY.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan held a peculiar position in the tribe. They seemed to consider him one of them and yet in some way different. The older males either ignored him entirely or else hated him so vindictively that but for his wondrous agility and speed and the fierce protection of the huge Kala he would have been dispatched at an early age.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

One by one the tribe swung down from their arboreal retreats and formed a circle about Tarzan and his vanquished foe. When they had all come Tarzan turned toward them. "I am Tarzan," he cried. "I am a great killer. Let all respect Tarzan of the Apes and Kala, his mother. There be none among you as mighty as Tarzan. Let his enemies beware."

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan of the Apes lived on in his wild, jungle existence with little change for several years, only that he grew stronger and wiser, and learned from his books more and more of the strange worlds which lay somewhere outside his primeval forest.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan was an interested spectator. His desire to kill burned fiercely in his wild breast, but his desire to learn was even greater. He would follow this savage creature for a while and know from whence he came. He could kill him at his leisure later, when the bow and deadly arrows were laid aside.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan must act quickly or his prey would be gone; but Tarzan's life training left so little space between decision and action when an emergency confronted him that there was not even room for the shadow of a thought between.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan of the Apes knew that they had found the body of his victim, but that interested him far less than the fact that no one remained in the village to prevent his taking a supply of the arrows which lay below him.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan of the Apes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruel brutality of his own kind.Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments of the ways of human beings.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Kerchak was dead. And thus came the young Lord Greystoke into the kingship of the Apes.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

For months the life of the little band went on much as it had before, except that Tarzan's greater intelligence and his ability as a hunter were the means of providing for them more bountifully than ever before. Most of them, therefore, were more than content with the change in rulers.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Had Kala lived, Tarzan would have sacrificed all else to remain near her, but now that she was dead, and the playful friends of his childhood grown into fierce and surly brutes he felt that he much preferred the peace and solitude of his cabin to the irksome duties of leadership amongst a horde of wild beasts.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Had there been no other personal attribute to influence the final outcome, Tarzan of the Apes, the young Lord Greystoke, would have died as he had lived — an unknown savage beast in equatorial Africa. But there was that which had raised him far above his fellows of the jungle — that little spark which spells the whole vast difference between man and brute — Reason. This it was which saved him from death beneath the iron muscles and tearing fangs of Terkoz.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all the jungle there is none so great.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan let him up, and in a few minutes all were back at their vocations, as though naught had occurred to mar the tranquility of their primeval forest haunts. But deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzan was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he had had it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him to live — unharmed.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

The conduct of the white strangers it was that caused him the greatest perturbation. He puckered his brows into a frown of deep thought. It was well, thought he, that he had not given way to his first impulse to rush forward and greet these white men as brothers.They were evidently no different from the black men — no more civilized than the apes — no less cruel than Sabor.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

The last member of the party to disembark was a girl of about nineteen, and it was the young man who stood at the boat's prow to lift her high and dry upon land. She gave him a brave and pretty smile of thanks, but no words passed between them.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

DO NOT HARM THE THINGS WHICH ARE TARZAN'S. TARZAN WATCHES. TARZAN OF THE APES.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Two keen eyes had watched every move of the party from the foliage of a nearby tree. Tarzan had seen the surprise caused by his notice, and while he could understand nothing of the spoken language of these strange people their gestures and facial expressions told him much.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Fingerprints prove you Greystoke. Congratulations. D'Arnot.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

They are unfettered by precedent in the administration of justice. Customs have been handed down by ages of repetition, but the punishment for ignoring a custom is a matter for individual treatment by a jury of the culprit’s peers, and I may say that justice seldom misses fire, but seems rather to rule in inverse ratio to the ascendency of law. In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I sat for hours cross-legged, and cross-tempered, upon my silks meditating upon the queer freaks chance plays upon us poor devils of mortals.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I verily believe that a man’s way with women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men. The weakling and the saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex, while the fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers unafraid, sits hiding in the shadows like some frightened child.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

“There is only one place you can go,” von Schoenvorts sent word to me, “and that is Kiel. You can’t land anywhere else in these waters. If you wish, I will take you there, and I can promise that you will be treated well.”“There is another place we can go,” I sent back my reply, “and we will before we’ll go to Germany. That place is hell.”

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

But metaphor, however poetic, never slaked a dry throat.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Like all his kind and all other bullies, von Schoenvorts was a coward at heart.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

She was a dear girl and a stanch and true comrade—more like a man than a woman.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I was sure that Lys was dead. I wanted myself to die, and yet I clung to life—useless and hopeless and harrowing a thing as it had become. I clung to life because some ancient, reptilian forbear had clung to life and transmitted to me through the ages the most powerful motive that guided his minute brain—the motive of self-preservation.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

That night the clouds broke, and the moon shone down upon our little ledge; and there, hand in hand, we turned our faces toward heaven and plighted our troth beneath the eyes of God. No human agency could have married us more sacredly than we are wed. We are man and wife, and we are content.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

She was quite the most wonderful animal that I have ever looked upon, and what few of her charms her apparel hid, it quite effectively succeeded in accentuating.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I was not at the time well enough acquainted with Caspakian ways to know that truthfulness and loyalty are two of the strongest characteristics of these primitive people. They are not sufficiently cultured to have become adept in hypocrisy, treason and dissimulation. There are, of course, a few exceptions.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

What was this hold she had upon me? Was I bewitched, that my mind refused to function sanely, and that judgment and reason were dethroned by some mad sentiment which I steadfastly refused to believe was love? I had never been in love. I was not in love now—the very thought was preposterous.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I could have kicked myself for the snob and the cad that my thoughts had proven me—me, who had always prided myself that I was neither the one nor the other!

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

This was a new menace that threatened them, something that they couldn’t explain; and so, naturally, it aroused within them superstitious fear.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Past experience suggested that the great wings were a part of some ingenious mechanical device, for the limitations of the human mind, which is always loath to accept aught beyond its own little experience, would not permit him to entertain the idea that the creatures might be naturally winged and at the same time of human origin.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Thus Bradley reasoned—thus most of us reason; not by what might be possible; but by what has fallen within the range of our experience.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

All my life I have been kicked and cuffed by such as that, and yet always have I gone out when they commanded, singing, to give up my life if need be to keep them in power. Only lately have I come to know what a fool I have been. But now I am no longer a fool, and besides, I am avenged.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I have often been asked how I came to write. The best answer is that I needed the money. When I started I was 35 and had failed in every enterprise I had ever attempted.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

No amount of money today could possibly give me the thrill that first $400 check gave me. My first story was entitled, "Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars." Metcalf changed it to "Under the Moons of Mars." It was later published in book form as A Princess of Mars.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

I had been trying to find a publisher who would put some of my stuff into book form, but I met with no encouragement. Every well-known publisher in the United States turned down Tarzan of the Apes, including A.C. McClurg & Co., who finally issued it, my first story in book form.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.

— 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