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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0145546 | She knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who was always neat and kind, whose house was quiet because there were no children, who hosted the knitting circle and kept small treats around in case some child might be in need of a licorice whip or a shortbread cookie. | Jane Smiley | ||
| b4642ad | I've experienced having you in the house. It's like living with a loud motor running all the time. Up, down, into this room and that room, eating supper, jumping from the table, cursing all the time, yelling over the telephone about things, laughing, making deals all the time. You take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise." She" -- | Jane Smiley | ||
| ee318a2 | a nice standing ovation from a studio audience of angels, who having all died themselves, know a good death when they see one. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 698a498 | But in the time-honored manner of most human males, he allowed his eyeballs to swivel her way so that he could check her out, then turned his head so that he could check her out better | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 3488984 | From an evolution standpoint, what was the point of having people around who were not inclined to have offspring? There must be some good, and fairly subtle, reason for it. The only thing he could work out was that it was groups of people--societies--rather than individual creatures, who were now trying to out-reproduce and/or kill each other, and that, in a society, there was plenty of room for someone who didn't have kids as long as he wa.. | Neal Stephenson | ||
| 0f06756 | The natural human's an animal without a logic. Your projection of logic onto all affairs is unnatural. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 62c8e24 | The price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life -we went soft, we lost our edge. | Frank Herbert | ||
| c8222e5 | 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 | ||
| 5d81601 | He found that he no longer could hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor or even the Harkonnens. They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes. And the race knew only one sure way for this--the ancient way, the tried and certain way that rolled over everything in its path: jihad. Surely, | Frank Herbert | ||
| ccbc773 | My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something | Frank Herbert | ||
| bfe2318 | When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. -- | Frank Herbert | ||
| a39473e | Canterbury was gone from the memories of men, as was the planet which had known it. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 8bcc2a4 | The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 7763892 | They tend to forget that nothing in a polarized universe can exist without its opposite being present. -- | Frank Herbert | ||
| eba7b69 | peace encourages aggressions, thus igniting war. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 8d6b1d8 | Who owns this river passage? This verdant valley? This peninsula? This planet? None of us. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 124e54e | We know this moment of supreme power contained Failure. There can only be one answer. That completely accurate and total prediction is lethal. | Frank Herbert | ||
| e4c4ab1 | They compose poems to their knives. | fremen sci-fi science-fiction | Frank Herbert | |
| b13c0f0 | 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 | ||
| 8a339f9 | The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 2af5492 | Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name. | consent government population war | Frank Herbert | |
| bb47cf9 | The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on y.. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 4234e8c | Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 506d108 | Pride overcame Paul's fear. "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he demanded. "Let us say I suggest you may be human," she said. "Steady! I warn you not to try jerking away. I am old, but my hand can drive this needle into your neck before you escape me." | Frank Herbert | ||
| 576bbe8 | Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. | Frank Herbert | ||
| b81f525 | We pray to a moon: she is round-- Luck with us will then abound, What we seek for shall be found In the land of solid ground. | Frank Herbert | ||
| e35142c | hold at your neck the gom jabbar," she said. "The gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy. It's a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. Ah-ah! Don't pull away or you'll feel that poison." | Frank Herbert | ||
| f45dd97 | In the perfect society, there is neither emotion nor mercy; precious space cannot be wasted on those who have outlived their usefulness. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 27deab0 | What matters most is the search itself. This is more important than the searchers. Consciousness must dream, it must have a dreaming ground--and, dreaming, must invoke ever new dreams. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 40dce36 | When your opponent fears you, then's the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the terrified man can be trusted usually to make a fatal mistake. You are being trained here to detect these mistakes and use them. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 3e28546 | pale northern complexion that turned to burn at the drop of a sunbeam. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 849e2d4 | Fannie Mae had aroused his anger, then reduced his anger to verbal breast-beating, and finally to silent hurt. Still, the love remained. Why? | love relationship | Frank Herbert | |
| 7de425e | She rides the sandworm of space! She guides through all storms Into the land of gentle winds. Though we sleep by the snake's den, She guards our dreaming sould. Shunning the desert heat, She hides us in a cool hollow. The gleaming of her white teeth Guides us in the night. By the braids of her hair We are lifted to heaven! Sweet fragrance, flower-scented, Surrounds us in her presence. | desert holy hymn trance | Frank Herbert | |
| be74230 | wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd! | Frank Herbert | ||
| b10e84d | still wanted those genetic characteristics carried by the Atreides. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 3ecba0c | It leads to self-fulfilling prophecy and justifications for all manner of obscenities," Leto said. "This ... rhetorical despotism, Lord?" "Yes! It shields evil behind walls of self-righteousness which are proof against all arguments against the evil." | Frank Herbert | ||
| e583f6c | Paul sat down where Hawat had been, straightened the papers. One more day here, he thought. He looked around the room. We're leaving. The idea of departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things--the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns--the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any .. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 3ad3c86 | They displayed a sophistication in warfare as good as anything he had ever encountered, and he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 4297642 | The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem," Kynes said, "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, a 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 .. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 3db903c | The people who demand that the oracle predict for them really want to know next year's price on whalefur or something equally mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal life. | oracle precognition | Frank Herbert | |
| 8810fe8 | Communal/managed economics have always been more destructive of their societies than those driven by greed | Frank Herbert | ||
| 7bb5c35 | The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you, | Frank Herbert | ||
| 4fed69c | Sir, I honor and respect the personal dignity of any man who respects my dignity. | Frank Herbert | ||
| ce57a92 | To accept a little death is worse than death itself, | Frank Herbert |