“Color streamed into a toe of darkness testing the sand.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”
―
Frank Herbert
“This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow’s life. I live now for my young Duke and the daughter yet to be.
―
Frank Herbert
“I’ll never be a Mentat,” he said. “I’m something else…a freak.”
―
Frank Herbert
“What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?”
―
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
“you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot—”
―
Frank Herbert
“Power and fear," he said. "The tools of statecraft.”
―
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
“My lungs taste the air of Time,
Blown past falling sands…”
―
Frank Herbert
“Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." she held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”
―
Frank Herbert
“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error
―
Frank Herbert
“Jessica stopped beside him: ‘What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.’
He spoke mechanically: ‘If only adults could relax like that.’
‘Yes.’
‘When do we lose it?’ He murmured…
‘We do indeed lose something,’ she said.”
―
Frank Herbert