“Paul sensed his own tensions, decided to practice one of the mind-body lessons his mother had taught him. Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness ... focusing the consciousness ... aortal dilation ... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness ... to be conscious by choice ... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions ... one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone ... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct ... the animal destroys and does not produce ... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual ... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe ... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid ... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs ... all things/cells/beings are impermanent ... strive for flow-permanence within....”
―
Frank Herbert
“As long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I have another kind of sight. I see another kind of terrain: the available paths.
―
Frank Herbert
“We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought.
―
Frank Herbert
“Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
―
Frank Herbert
“She thought of the boy's features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns-endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.”
―
Frank Herbert
“How the mind gears itself for its environment, she thought. And she recalled a Bene Gesserit axiom: “The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Mankind has only one science… its the science of discontent.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. The power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably much face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.”
―
Frank Herbert