“The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts—voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast.”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.”
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Frank Herbert
“Paul stepped past her, lifting his binoculars. He adjusted their internal pressure with a quick twist, focused the oil lenses on the other cliff, lifting golden tan in morning light across open sand. Jessica”
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Frank Herbert
“Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.”
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Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Mood?” Halleck’s voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield’s filtering. “What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting.”
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Frank Herbert
“On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power," the Duke said. "Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul.”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience...
Understanding must move with the flow of the process.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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.”
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Frank Herbert
“The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn’t tell them?”
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Frank Herbert
“You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip.”
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Frank Herbert
“A single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”
―
Frank Herbert