“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
“She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Maud'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Maud'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.”
―
Frank Herbert
“THE DUKE Leto Atreides leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower outside Arrakeen. The night’s first moon, an oblate silver coin, hung well above the southern horizon. Beneath it, the jagged cliffs of the Shield Wall shone like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Arrakeen glowed in the haze—yellow . . . white . . . blue.”
―
Frank Herbert
“All around the Lady Jessica—piled in corners of the Arrakeen great hall, mounded in the open spaces—stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes, trunks, cartons, cases—some partly unpacked.”
―
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
“People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.”
―
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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept.”
―
Frank Herbert
“His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives.”
―
Frank Herbert
“For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life.”
―
Frank Herbert