Quotes from Frank Herbert

When our time ends on its rictus smile, we'll pass the lure of fortune.

If you are corruptible and your imagination is confined to worries about loss of power, you exist in a self-destructive system

you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep? Time has slipped away. Your life is stolen. You tarried with trifles, Victim of your folly.

he really cared for Fannie Mae! He admired her . . . and she could hurt him because he admired her and felt . . . felt this way.

Forgive us, Lord," Nunepi whispered. "Forgive you?" Leto's voice was full of sweet reason. "Of course I forgive you. That is your God's function. Your crime is forgiven. However, your stupidity requires a response.

It's a rule of ecology," Kynes said, "that the young Master appears to understand quite well. The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system. Blood's an efficient energy source.

Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.

To accept a little-death is worse than death itself," Chani said.

A victory is useless unless it reflects your deepest wishes.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase.

When oracles failed, one turned to real spies and physical powers.

Someday I'll catch that man without a quotation and he'll look undressed," the Duke said.

In the strictures of Arrakis, human flesh remains the most durable and reliable resource for the Hajj. Perhaps it is the implicit awareness of this fact which makes Arrakis the ultimate mirror of the soul.

The mouth snaked toward the narrow crack where Paul and Jessica huddled. Cinnamon yelled in their nostrils. Moonlight flashed from crystal teeth.

The absence of a thing," the Baron said, "this can be as deadly as the presence. The absence of air, eh? The absence of water? The absence of anything else we're addicted to.

To stay awake all night adds a day to your life," Stilgar said, accepting the tray with coffee as it was passed in the door.

Battle of Corrin.

Behavioral engineering in all of its manifestations always degenerates into merciless manipulation. It reduces all (manipulators and manipulated alike) to a deadly mass effect. The central assumption, that manipulation of individual personalities can achieve uniform behavioral responses, has been exposed as a lie by many species but never with more telling effect than by the Gowachin on Dosadi. — The Dosadi Papers, BuSab reference

Când sunt mai slab ca voi, v? cer libertatea pentru c? asta corespunde principiilor voastre; când sunt mai puternic ca voi, v? iau libertatea pentru c? asta corespunde principiilor mele.

Moneo's eyes went wide with a sudden questioning awareness. He had seen the action of many polarities—the thing made known by its opposite.

When is a gift not a gift?

In the silence that came between them, a breeze from a ventilator could be heard fingering the blinds.

the afternoon shadows gloomed the depths of the city

The high data-rate sense perception and identification abilities of the human system mostly bypass verbal/analytic awareness. We are generally conscious of a cognitive recognition after the fact. In this way, what we understand as consciousness has to be identified as a reflexive monitoring ability with quite limited application. To produce consciousness (artificial or otherwise) we are stepping down, not up.