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…
Book 1912
A Princess of Mars quotes
Get the book at Bookshop.org Supports independent bookstores. We earn a small commission.
About the book
John Carter, a Confederate veteran prospecting in Arizona, is mysteriously carried to Mars, which its people call Barsoom. There his Earth muscles give him startling strength, and he finds himself caught between warring peoples on a dying planet while falling for Dejah Thoris, a princess of Helium. This is the swashbuckling adventure that launched planetary romance and inspired generations of science fiction.
5 quotes
I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. … I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive…
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…
Owning everything in common, even to your women and children, has resulted in your owning nothing in common. You hate each other as you hate all else except yourselves.
I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will…