Herbert Quotes

You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.

I have said: "Blow out the lamp! Day is here!" And you keep saying: "Give me a lamp so I can find the day.

No man is equal to his book. All the best products of his mental activity go into his book, where they come separated from the mass of inferior products with which they are mingled in his daily talk.

With a smile of grim satisfaction, he bellowed his call. And the rebels surged forward in an act that would be remembered for ten thousand years.

The revolution is for the sake of life, not death.

What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.

And the question of Wester religion, ” Flattery said, “is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?

Hayt felt suddenly that he existed in a dream controlled by some other mind, and that he might momentarily forget this to become lost in the convolutions of that mind.

The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.

Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura, " the Duke said. "I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.

Then are there no rules at all, Lord?” Moneo's voice conveyed a faint hint of hysteria.Leto smiled to ease the man's tensions. “Perhaps one. Short–term decisions tend to fail in the long–term.

Mood’s a thing for cattle or for making love. You fight when the necessity arises, no matter your mood.

What the eyes had seen could not be erased.

Wild Fremen said it well: "Four things cannot be hidden -- love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled.

Everything had life to me, ’ he heard Enkidu murmur, ‘the sky, the storm, the earth, water, wandering, the moon and its three children, salt, even my hand had life. It’s gone. It’s gone.

The hunter does not seek dead game.

You do not beg the sun for mercy.-Maud'dib's Travail from The Stilgar Commentary

As long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance.

And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold . . . not bought, but sold.

We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane.

How would we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?

Chance is the nature of our universe. […] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.

Hard tasks need hard ways.

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and allelse, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses!

The great error of physicians has been that of attributing recovery to the operations of their poisons, while they have left out of account the healing powers of the body itself.

The first thousand are the hardest.

He straightened, assuming an odd attitude of dignity – as though it were another mask.

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.

In adverse circumstances, every creature becomes something else, evolving or devolving. What makes us human is that we know what we once were, and, let us hope, we remember how to change back.

If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor — poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living.

One moment of incompetence can be fatal.

It could be a work of art among vendettas

A winner has more skills than a loser, " Vor said, "no matter how you define the competition.

No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero

Do 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.

...a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention...

We will not run, " Paul said. "We'll move with dignity. We'll do what must be done.

We will never forgive and we will never forget.

There are rich counsels in the trees.

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. Something cannot emerge from nothing.

Forget the times of your distress but never forget what they taught you.

You should read it though there is much that is skip-worthy.

He is an old bore even the grave yawns for him.

Few have heard of Fra Luca Parioli the inventor of double-entry bookkeeping but he has probably had more influence on human life than has Dante or Michelangelo.

A cheerful look makes a dish a feast

Failure is only postponed success as long as courage "coaches" ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.

He that hath lost his credit is dead to the world.

A power greater than any human being helped make this decision.

There is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow or the relentless drift of events will make the decision for us.