Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.


Frank Herbert

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You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.
FRANK HERBERT
When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bri...
FRANK HERBERT
What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and...
FRANK HERBERT
I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria.
FRANK HERBERT
... one doesn't need telepathy to read your intentions.
FRANK HERBERT
This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to sla...
FRANK HERBERT
There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time.
FRANK HERBERT
The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique cap...
FRANK HERBERT
Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children kn...
FRANK HERBERT
Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You co...
FRANK HERBERT
He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it.
FRANK HERBERT
A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language y...
FRANK HERBERT
Some say," Scytale said, "that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They f...
FRANK HERBERT
I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness ...
FRANK HERBERT
She looked at patches of blackness. Black is a blind remembering, she thought.
FRANK HERBERT
I observed you in pain, lad. Pain’s merely the axis of the test. Your mother’s told you about ou...
FRANK HERBERT
Where is Alia?' she asked.
'Out doing what any good Fremen child should be doing in such times,...
FRANK HERBERT
you can’t buy security
FRANK HERBERT
You must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned.
FRANK HERBERT
My brother comes now," Alia said. "Even an Emperor may tremble before Muad'Dib, for he has the stren...
FRANK HERBERT
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the lev...
FRANK HERBERT
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
FRANK HERBERT
Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on...
FRANK HERBERT
Arrakis makes us moral and ethical.
FRANK HERBERT
The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric....
FRANK HERBERT
the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence.
FRANK HERBERT
Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.
FRANK HERBERT
he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning “That path leads ever down into s...
FRANK HERBERT