“He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.”
―
Frank Herbert
“The Duke said: “Paul, I’m doing a hateful thing, but I must.” He stood beside the portable poison snooper that had been brought into the conference room for their breakfast. The thing’s sensor arms hung limply over the table, reminding Paul of some weird insect newly dead. The Duke’s”
―
Frank Herbert
“A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.”
―
Frank Herbert
“we can say that Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. 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. Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson. —”
―
Frank Herbert
“Sometimes I wonder about Piter," the Baron said. "I cause pain out of necessity, but he...I swear he takes a positive delight in it."
―
Frank Herbert
“And 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
“When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences in custom and training.”
―
Frank Herbert
“ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings.
―
Frank Herbert
“And he thought then about the Guild—the force that had specialized for so long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword…and now they could not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of specializing on the melange awareness-spectrum narcotic for their navigators. They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they’d existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce a new host when the old one died.”
―
Frank Herbert
“Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these 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
