All my life I have been kicked and cuffed by such as that, and yet always have I gone out when they commanded, singing, to give up my life if need be… - Edgar Rice Burroughs

But this I do know that since you have told me that ten years have elapsed since I departed from this earth I have lost all respect for time — I am commencing to doubt that such a thing exists other than in the weak, finite mind of man.

Thus, at eighteen, we find him, an English lordling, who could speak no English, and yet who could read and write his native language. Never had he seen a human being other than himself, for the little area traversed by his tribe was watered by no greater river to bring down the savage natives of the interior. High hills shut it off on three sides, the ocean on the fourth. It was alive with lions and leopards and poisonous snakes. Its untouched mazes of matted jungle had as yet invited no hardy pioneer from the human beasts beyond its frontier.

I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all the jungle there is none so great.