Frank Herbert Quotes

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

I like thinking about the fragility of the human flesh and our bodies - our decay and eventual death.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).

I have spent seventy years finding out that I am not God.

There are things you have to look at with those world-class players, but at the end of the day, they're not superheroes. They're still human.

I don't want my work or me, as a person, to be held up as a paradigm because, as Richard Dawkins knows, if people hold you up too much, you're only ever going to disappoint them by being a human.

Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty.

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.

All flesh doth frailty breed!

It's easy to forget people are blood and bone. They're not indestructible.

Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.

We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

I can remember being eight years old and having infinite possibilities. But life ends up being so much less that we thought it would be when we were kids, with relationships that are so empty and stupid and brutal. If you don't find a way to break the chain and change in some way, then you wind up, as the rhyme goes: a murder of one, for sorrow.

Flesh is weak, but love is strong.

The body is what reminds us on a daily basis that we're human. The body defies us, it betrays us, we have to struggle with it, you know. And it reveals in curious and in abiding ways how we are not perfect.

We tell our kids that policemen are good and God protects us and our country is noble, and at a certain point - and for some it comes quite early, five or six years old - we start to realize that it's all a facade.

We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed that not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.

Heavenly Father - take to thee The supreme iniquity Fashioned by thy candid Hand In a moment contraband - Though to trust us seem to us More respectful - We are Dust - We apologize to thee For thine own Duplicity.

God giving man life and taking it away is not nearly so bad as God taking away childhood and giving him life.

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.

There is only one ultimate and effectual preventative for the maladies to which flesh is heir, and that is death.