“Can you remember your first taste of spice?” “It tasted like cinnamon.” “But never twice the same,” he said. “It’s like life—it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Maud’Dib could indeed, see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond the valley. Just so, Maud’Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that 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.” And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning “That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.”
―
Frank Herbert
“he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning “That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Fremen have a simple, practical religion,” he said.
“Nothing about religion is simple.”
―
Frank Herbert
“it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Don’t be so sure you know where to draw the line,” he said. “We carry our past with us. And, mother mine, there’s a thing you don’t know and should—we are Harkonnens.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He doesn’t appear much, does he—one frightened old fat man too weak to support his own flesh without the help of suspensors.”
―
Frank Herbert
“You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.”
―
Frank Herbert
“When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.”
―
Frank Herbert
“They displayed a sophistication in warfare as good as anything he had ever encountered, and he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived.”
―
Frank Herbert
“It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought.
―
Frank Herbert
“What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
―
Frank Herbert
