“spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. —”
―
Frank Herbert
“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 are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that”
―
Frank Herbert
“trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space.
―
Frank Herbert
“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
“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of carbon dioxide was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous “blow” with a dust whirlpool at its center. It would exchange what had been formed deep in the sand for whatever lay on the surface.
―
Frank Herbert
“The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever.”
―
Frank Herbert
“the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept.”
―
Frank Herbert
“A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.”
―
Frank Herbert
“I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.”
―
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.”
―
Frank Herbert
“He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.”
―
Frank Herbert
