“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’” Paul quoted.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The night is a tunnel, she thought, a hole into tomorrow...”
―
Frank Herbert
“If he could smell the pre-spice mass, that meant the gasses deep under the sand were nearing explosive pressure.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, and then up to the Reverend Mother. The sound of her voice contained a difference than from any other voicing his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his awareness: My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
―
Frank Herbert
“People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
―
Frank Herbert
“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
“How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to a door?”
―
Frank Herbert
“What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?”
―
Frank Herbert
