“Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.”
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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
“We came from Caladan—a paradise world for our form of life. There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind—we could see the actuality all around us. 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.”
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Frank Herbert
“spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. —”
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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.”
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Frank Herbert
“I’m the well-trained fruit tree, he thought. Full of well-trained feelings and abilities and all of them grafted onto me—all bearing for someone else to pick.”
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Frank Herbert
“You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic
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Frank Herbert
“You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach.”
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Frank Herbert
“Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way - in the minutiae of observation.”
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Frank Herbert
“Shishakli presented two thin, whiplike shafts as Paul approached. The shafts were about a meter and a half long with glistening plasteel hoods at one end, roughened at the other end for a firm grip. Paul accepted them both in his left hand as required by the ritual. “They are my own hooks,” Shishakli said in a husky voice. “They never have failed.”
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Frank Herbert
“My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.”
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Frank Herbert
“Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat.”
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Frank Herbert