When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan.
Inflection is the adjective of language. It carries the subtleties of delight and horror, the essence of culture and social process.
Is God troubled?” And her companion replied: “The sins of this universe would trouble anyone.
People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That’s a dangerous form of sophistication. It’s disorderly.
My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.
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?
Chani sat back on her heels, submerging her fears in thought as she studied Paul’s face. This was a trick she had learned from watching the Reverend Mothers. Time could be made to serve the mind.
Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura,” the Duke said. “I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.
We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences – the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched.
The Zensunni approach to birth,” he said, urging her even faster, “is to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension. Do not compete with what is happening. To compete is to prepare for failure. Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything.
It is said of Muad’Dib that once when he saw a weed trying to grow between two rocks, he moved one of the rocks. Later, when the weed was seen to be flourishing, he covered it with the remaining rock. “That was its fate,” he explained.
When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place.
Growing older is to grow more wicked.
Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!
Duncan, have I not told you that when you think you know something, that is a most perfect barrier against learning?
But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they knew of what they created by their demands. Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.
Life is not an option, it is a gift. Death is the option.
There are many kinds of ignorance, Streggi. The basest is to follow your own desires without examining them. Sometimes, we do it unconsciously. Hone your sensitivity. Be aware of what you do unconsciously. Always ask: ‘When I did that, what was I trying to gain?
To be sighted in the land of the blind carries its own perils.
Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding brilliance. –.