“He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man.”
―
Frank Herbert
“learned rapidly because his first training was in how to leam. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”
―
Frank Herbert
“There are proven ways to win the loyalty of tough, strong, ferocious men: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Power and fear," he said. "The tools of statecraft.”
―
Frank Herbert
“spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. —”
―
Frank Herbert
“You must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned.”
―
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
“Surely not a palm lock, she told herself. A palm lock must be keyed to one individual’s hand shape and palm lines. But it looked like a palm lock. And there were ways to open any palm lock—as she had learned at school.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What is the son but an extension of the father? —”
―
Frank Herbert
“It doesn't follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.”
―
Frank Herbert
“How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover.”
―
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
“One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can’t evade it. I heard my father when he spoke of my mother. She’s not the betrayer, Gurney.”
―
Frank Herbert
“She’s the One all right,” she muttered. “Poor thing.”
―
Frank Herbert