ERBzine 128a: Tarzan of the Quotes

The First and Only Online Fanzine Devoted to the Life and Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs

Master of Imaginative Fantasy Adventure
Creator of Tarzan
and
"Grandfather of American Science Fiction"

ERBzine 0128a

The Many Worlds of

"The master of imaginative fantasy adventure...
...the creator of Tarzan and...
...the 'grandfather of science-fiction'"
ERB COMPENDIUM T7-8
TARZAN THE UNTAMED

When necessity demanded, Tarzan of the Apes sloughed the thin veneer of his civilization and with it the hampering apparel that was its badge. In a moment the polished English gentleman reverted to the naked ape-man. (5)
No particle had his shallow probing of English society dulled his marvelous sense faculties. (6)

Even as the beasts, Tarzan of the Apes seemed to possess a sixth sense. (7)

His was the suffering of the dumb brute -- mute; but though voiceless no less poignant. (10)

Tarzan blamed his weakness, as he considered it, upon his association with the effeminating influences of civilization... for in the bottom of his savage heart he held in contempt both civilization and its representatives....

It was Hate -- and it brought to [Tarzan] a measure of solace and of comfort -- it centered about the slayer of his mate, of couirse; but it included everything German, animate or inanimate....(11)

Never had his civilization been more than a thin veneer put on for the sake of her he loved... In reality he had always held the outward evidences of so-called culture in deep contempt. Civilization meant to Tarzan of the Apes a curtailment of freedom in all its aspects -- freedom of action, freedom of thought, freedom of love, freedom of hate. (11)

...it had ever been beyond him to understand how clothes could be considered more beautiful than a clear, firm, healthy skin, or coat and trousers more graceful than the gentle curves of rounded muscles playing beneath a flexible hide. (12)

The beast is actively interested only in now... there is an eternity of time... when no emergency prompted him to swift action. (14)

...more jungle battles were won by hideous growling than by actual combat, the law of bluff holding quite as good in the jungle as elsewhere... (16)

So all work found Tarzan serious, though he still retained what the other beasts lost as they grew older -- a sense of humor, which he gave play to when the mood suited him. It was a grim humor and sometimes ghastly... (56)

Tarzan possessed the ability to concentrate each of his five senses upon its particular business. (56)

Tarzan brought the sharp point [of his knife] to the lower part of the German's abdomen. "Thus you slew my mate," he hissed in a terrible voice. "Thus shall you die!"

"Oh, God, no!" Not that. You are too brave -- you cannot be such a beast as that!" [pleads Bertha Kircher/Patricia Canby].

Tarzan turned to her. "No," he said, "you are right, I cannot do it -- I am no German," and he raised the point of his blade and sunk it deep into the putrid heart of Hauptmann Fritz Schneider.

He won his way through his savage world by the might of his own muscle, the superior keenness of his five senses, and his God-given power to reason. (198)

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