Quotes from A Princess of Mars

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

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

“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, quote from A Princess of Mars

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

“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, quote from A Princess of Mars

“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, quote from A Princess of Mars

“I understand that you belittle all sentiments of generosity and kindness, but I do not, and I can convince your most doughty warrior that these characteristics are not incompatible with an ability to fight.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“I am a very old man. How old I do not know. It is possible I am a hundred, maybe more. I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men do.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“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. My mind is evidently so constituted that I am subconsciously forced into the path of duty without recourse to tiresome mental processes. However that may be, I have never regretted that cowardice is not optional with me.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“As you know I am not of Barsoom; your ways are not my ways, and I can only act in the future as I have in the past, in accordance with the dictates of my conscience and guided by the standards of mine own people.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“And so, in silence, we walked the surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.

I loved Dejah Thoris. The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved her since the first moment my eyes had met hers that first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from 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, quote from A Princess of Mars

“Fear is a relative term and so I can only measure my feelings at that time by what I had experienced in previous positions of danger and by those that I have passed through since; but I can say without shame that if the sensations I endured during the next few minutes were fear, then may God help the coward, for cowardice is of a surety its own punishment.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“(..)how a force of six or eight fight­ing men could have done so un­ob­served is be­yond me. We shall soon know, how­ev­er, for here comes the roy­al psy­chol­ogist.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“Early the next morning I was astir. Considerable freedom was allowed me, as Sola had informed me that so long as I did not attempt to leave the city I was free to go and come as I pleased. She had warned me, however, against venturing forth unarmed, as this city, like all other deserted metropolises of an ancient Martian civilization, was peopled by the great white apes of my second day's adventure.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the highest type.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“There was one slight, desperate chance, and that I decided I must take--it was for Dejah Thoris, and no man has lived who would not risk a thousand deaths for such as she.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain. 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”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“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”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever;”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“Whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to serve you than not.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

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

“Like its master, it was entirely devoid of hair, but was of a dark slate color and exceeding smooth and glossy. Its belly was white, and its legs shaded from the slate of its shoulders and hips to a vivid yellow at the feet. The feet themselves were heavily padded and nailless, which fact had also contributed to the noiselessness of their approach, and, in common with a multiplicity of legs, is a characteristic feature of the fauna of Mars. The highest type of man and one other animal, the only mammal existing on Mars, alone have well-formed nails, and there are absolutely no hoofed animals in existence there.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“Give a Martian woman a chance and death must take a back seat.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“So this was love! I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed the five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful women and urging opportunity; in spite of a half-desire for love and a constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall furiously and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world, of a species similar possibly, yet not identical with mine.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“E così, nel cuore di una città dove infuriava un conflitto selvaggio, piena di grida guerresche, mentre la morte e la distruzione mietevano dovunque un sanguinoso raccolto, Dejah Thoris, Principessa di Helium, vera figlia di Marte, Dio della Guerra, si promise in sposa a John Carter, gentiluomo della Virginia”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

“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.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, quote from A Princess of Mars

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