“Men looked at their gods and their rituals and saw that both were filled with that most terrible of all equations: fear over ambition.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Life produces a different taste each time you take it.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem,” Kynes said, “is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.”
―
Frank Herbert
“His thoughts were too vague to be described, but they comprehended mysterious elements.”
―
Frank Herbert
“the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, and then up to the Reverend Mother. The sound of her voice contained a difference than from any other voicing his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Gurney says there’s no artistry in killing with the tip, that it should be done with the edge.”
―
Frank Herbert
“For a moment, the sensation of coolness and the moisture were blessed relief. Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.”
―
Frank Herbert
“people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife—chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: “Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.”
―
Frank Herbert
