Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Tarzan of the Apes quotes
16 quotes from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #78 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled, and smiles are the foundation of beauty.
DO NOT HARM THE THINGS WHICH ARE TARZAN’S. TARZAN WATCHES. TARZAN OF THE APES.
“I was born there,” said Tarzan, quietly. “My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn’t tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was.”
— Tarzan · XXVIII. Conclusion
I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all the jungle there is none so great.
— Spoken by a character · XII. Man’s Reason
I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine. We live here together always in my house.
I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not believe, still should I love.
— Spoken by a character · XXIV. Lost Treasure
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!
Teach me to speak the language of men.
And could she love where she feared?
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.
He killed for food most often, but, being a man, he sometimes killed for pleasure, a thing which no other animal does; for it has remained for man alone among all creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the mere pleasure of inflicting suffering and death.
With man it is different. When he comes many of the larger animals instinctively leave the district entirely, seldom if ever to return; and thus it has always been with the great anthropoids. They flee man as man flees a pestilence.
Even brave men, and D’Arnot was a brave man, are sometimes frightened by solitude.
There is but one thing to do, Alice,” and he spoke as quietly as though they were sitting in their snug living room at home, “and that is work. Work must be our salvation. We must not give ourselves time to think, for in that direction lies madness.
— Spoken by a character · II. The Savage Home
What they accomplished, Alice, with instruments and weapons of stone and bone, surely that may we accomplish also.
— Spoken by a character · II. The Savage Home
It had become evident to Tarzan that without money one must die.