Brian Herbert

“We must face our responsibilities regardless of whether we get what we want.”

“Simplicity is the most difficult of all concepts.”

“Humans are different in private than in the presence of others. While the private persona merges into the social persona in varying degrees, the union is never complete. Something is always held back.”

“Any school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers.”

“We are trained to believe and not to know.”

“Once you have explored a fear, it becomes less terrifying. Part of courage comes from extending our knowledge.”

“When we try to conceal our innermost drives, our entire being screams betrayal.”

“The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The willingness to learn is a choice.”

“We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods.”

“Religion is the emulation of the adult by the child. Religion is the encystment of past beliefs: mythology, which is guesswork, the hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, those pronouncements which men have made in search of personal power . . . all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always the ultimate unspoken commandment is "Thou shalt not question!" But we do anyway. We break that commandment as a matter of course. The work to which we have set ourselves is the liberating of the imagination, the harnessing of imagination to humankind's deepest sense of creativity.”

“Look inside yourself and you can see the universe.”

“A man may fight the greatest enemy, take the longest journey, survive the most grievous wound -- and still be helpless in the hands of the woman he loves.”

“Some say that the anticipation of a thing is better than the thing itself. In my view, this is utter nonsense. Any fool can imagine a prize. I desire the tangible.”

“How will I be remembered by my children? This is the true measure of a man.”

“It is said that there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe -- that nothing remains in its original state, that each day, each hour, each moment, there is change.”

“The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown.”

“There is no reality -- only our own order imposed on everything.”

“The Unknown surrounds us at any given moment. That is where we seek knowledge.”

“No person can ever know everything that is in the heart of another. We are all Face Dancers in our souls.”

“Though death will cancel it, life in this world is a glorious thing.”

“What is this Love that so many speak of with such apparent familiarity? Do they truly comprehend how unattainable it is? Are there not as many definitions of Love as there are stars in the universe?”

“You carve wounds upon my flesh and write there in salt!”

“If you surrender, you have already lost. If you refuse to give up, though, no matter the odds against you, at least you have succeeded in trying.”

“The Universe operates on a basic principle of economics: everything has its cost. We pay to create our future, we pay for the mistakes of the past. We pay for every change we make . . . and we pay just as dearly if we refuse to change.”

“No one has yet determined the power of the human species . . . what it may perform by instinct, and what it may accomplish with rational determination.”

“The universe is our picture. Only the immature imagine the cosmos to be what they think it is.”

“Never underestimate the power of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe, no matter the conflicting evidence.”

“Discovery is dangerous . . . but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live.”

“Her face looked like a fruit from which all the juice had been sucked.”

“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.”

“Address the solvable first, instructs the father by way of teaching his son crisis management. That way, he counsels, there is less distraction to tackle more daunting issues.”

“Let pressure pass over and through you. That way you can't be harmed by it.”

“It's so much more interesting to study a ... damaged world. I find it difficult to learn anything in a place that's too civilized.”

“I'm a thinker. That is what I do, in great depth and detail, every waking moment of the day. I like to believe it's worthwhile. And yet, I can't help but recall something ... said to me once when I was young: "All of these things with which we occupy ourselves don't amount to much in the cosmic scale of things, do they? No matter how extensively we ponder any particular topic, there is really very little there"--Gilbertus Albans, Reflections in the Mirror of the Mind”

“Life is filled with tests, one after another, and if you don't recognize them, you are certain to fail the most important ones.”

“We are animals, yet are expected to be so much more. Although honor requires us to make altruistic decisions, even acting for the benefit of other people keeps coming back to self-interest, no matter how much one attempts to conceal it.”

“Not all accidents are what they seem. Victims do no even know why they have been chosen.”

“...the Baron felt cold inside, certain that even the most careful manipulations would not stand up to the close scrutiny of these demonic auditors.”

“We could be dreaming all the time, but we do not perceive those dreams while we are awake because consciousness (like the sun obscuring stars during the day) is much too brilliant to allow the unconscious content so much definition.”

“The first step in innovation is to know that a thing can be created. After that, the rest is a matter of detail.”

“Brilliant, Piter! I'm glad I didn't execute you all those times when you were so annoying.''So am I,' de Vries said.”

“Even the poorest House can be rich in loyalty. Allegiance that must be purchased by bribes or wages is hollow and flawed, and could break at the worst possible moment. Allegiance that comes from the heart, though, is stronger than adamantium and more valuable than purest melange.”

“Seeker, who says religion is the way to God?”

“Aristotle raped reason. He implanted in the dominant schools of philosophy the attractive belief that there can be discrete separation between mind and body. This led quite naturally to corollary delusions such as the one that power can be understood without applying it, or that joy is totally removable from unhappiness, that peace can exist in the total absence of war, or that life can be understood without death.—ERASMUS, Corrin Notes”

“Love is the highest achievement to which any human may aspire. It is an emotion that encompasses the full depth of heart, mind, and soul.”

“The greatest relevancy can become irrelevant in the space of a heartbeat.”

“My Sihaya,’ he said as he held her, ‘I have loved you for five thousand years.”

“Some say it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. That is a defeatist attitude. I intend to rule everywhere, not just in Hell."- General Agamemnon New Memoirs”