American writer (1875-1950)
The jungle which is presided over by Kudu, the sun, is a very different jungle from that of Goro, the moon. The diurnal jungle has its own aspect--its own lights and shades, its own birds, its own blooms, its own beasts ... The lights and shades of the nocturnal jungle are as different as one might imagine the lights and shades of another world to differ from those of our world.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
Jungle Tales of Tarzan
In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
A Princess of Mars
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
We are between the wild thoat of certainty and the mad zitidar of fact -- we can escape neither.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
The Gods of Mars
Life would be very miserable indeed were I to spend it in terror of the thing that has not yet happened.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
The Son of Tarzan
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
How I Wrote the Tarzan Books
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
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
A Princess of Mars
I presume that it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
A Princess of Mars
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.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
A Princess of Mars
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.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
Tarzan of the Apes
A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart.
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
Llana of Gathol
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
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
Imagination it is which builds bridges, and cities, and empires. The beasts know it not ... 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
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
A Princess of Mars
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
Tarzan of the Apes
But metaphor, however poetic, never slaked a dry throat.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
The Land That Time Forgot