“Then you should just go take one,” Hawat sneered. “Yes,” the Fremen said. “We took one. We have it hidden where Stilgar can study it for Liet and where Liet can see it for himself if he wishes. But I doubt he’ll want to: the weapon is not a very good one. Poor design for Arrakis.” “You…took one?” Hawat asked. “It was a good fight,” the Fremen said. “We lost only two men and spilled the water from more than a hundred of theirs.” There were Sardaukar at every gun, Hawat thought. This desert madman speaks casually of losing only two men against Sardaukar!”
―
Frank Herbert
“He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.”
―
Frank Herbert
“They’d never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself. He put that thought aside for later consideration in his own training program.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men’s lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat.”
―
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
“Paul sat down where Hawat had been, straightened the papers. One more day here, he thought. He looked around the room. We’re leaving. The idea of departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things—the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns—the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?”
―
Frank Herbert
“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Mood’s a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood.”
―
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
“A man's flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!”
―
Frank Herbert
“And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life -we went soft, we lost our edge.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I never could bring myself to trust a traitor,” the Baron said. “Not even a traitor I created.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it.”
―
Frank Herbert
