“Inflection is the adjective of language. It carries the subtleties of delight and horror, the essence of culture and social process.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Myths are not fiction, but history seen with a poet's eyes and recounted in a poet's terms.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“A good bureaucracy is the best tool of oppression ever invented.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Hittite law emphasized restitution rather than revenge. Humankind lost a certain useful practicality when it chose the other Semitic response—never to forgive and never to forget.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“The mystery of consciousness? Erroneous data—significant results.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Ignoring that which is false is also a knowing. Thus—learning. To learn is to grow and to grow is to live. You may practice forgetting and thus learn.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Even the seemingly immortal gods survive only as long as they are required by mortal men.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
Frank Herbert
Born place: in Tacoma, Washington, The United States
Born date October 8, 1920
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“To borrow Wittgenstein’s famous metaphor, morality can climb the ladder of evolution and then kick it away. As”
― Joshua D. Greene, quote from Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
“Here’s how to get started: 1. Sit still and stay put . Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the ground, or sit cross-legged on a cushion. Sit up straight and rest your hands in your lap. It’s important not to fidget when you meditate—that’s the physical foundation of self-control. If you notice the instinct to scratch an itch, adjust your arms, or cross and uncross your legs, see if you can feel the urge but not follow it. This simple act of staying still is part of what makes meditation willpower training effective. You’re learning not to automatically follow every single impulse that your brain and body produce. 2. Turn your attention to the breath. Close your eyes or, if you are worried about falling asleep, focus your gaze at a single spot (like a blank wall, not the Home Shopping Network). Begin to notice your breathing. Silently say in your mind “inhale” as you breathe in and “exhale” as you breathe out. When you notice your mind wandering (and it will), just bring it back to the breath. This practice of coming back to the breath, again and again, kicks the prefrontal cortex into high gear and quiets the stress and craving centers of your brain . 3. Notice how it feels to breathe, and notice how the mind wanders. After a few minutes, drop the labels “inhale/exhale.” Try focusing on just the feeling of breathing. You might notice the sensations of the breath flowing in and out of your nose and mouth. You might sense the belly or chest expanding as you breathe in, and deflating as you breathe out. Your mind might wander a bit more without the labeling. Just as before, when you notice yourself thinking about something else, bring your attention back to the breath. If you need help refocusing, bring yourself back to the breath by saying “inhale” and “exhale” for a few rounds. This part of the practice trains self-awareness along with self-control. Start with five minutes a day. When this becomes a habit, try ten to fifteen minutes a day. If that starts to feel like a burden, bring it back down to five. A short practice that you do every day is better than a long practice you keep putting off to tomorrow. It may help you to pick a specific time that you will meditate every day, like right before your morning shower. If this is impossible, staying flexible will help you fit it in when you can.”
― Kelly McGonigal, quote from The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
“I remembered during puberty, through the anorexic mists of intermittent menstrual cycles, that man, my father, lifting Shirley's nightdress over her head and asking her in his mocking way to choose what colour condom she wanted. 'Red or yellow?' Which did she choose? I can't remember. Perhaps she alternated. Perhaps there were other colours. It didn't happen once. It happened again and again. I had no power to stop it. That man, my father, had some control over me. I was drugged by the black silence in that big house, the vile whiff of aftershave, the crushing torment of inevitability. My father fucked Shirley using red or yellow condoms and it was those condoms that brought it all to an end. It was my last realization of the day; any more would have been too much to contemplate.
That time when my mother had found used condoms in bedroom, he had admitted, after a pointless burst my father's of denial, that he had been going to prostitutes. That was no doubt true but I can't imagine clients take used condoms away with them; prostitutes would surely get rid of the things. No. My father kept those used condoms as a prize. He was fucking his fourteen-year-old-daughter. He was proud of it.
Rebecca welled up with tears. Poor thing, she kept saying. Poor thing.”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
“Acaso se deba a que vivo mucho conmigo mismo y los más pequeños detalles en una vida tan monótona adquieren una importancia demasiado grande. Me escucho en exceso cuando vivo, cuando pienso; oigo el latido de mis arterias y las pulsaciones de mi corazón y a fuerza de atención desprendo las ideas más inaprensibles del turbio vapor en que flotan y les doy cuerpo. Si actuase más, no repararía en esas pequeñeces ni tendría tiempo de mirar mi alma al microscopio, como hago todo el día.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin
“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz
Up in the Old Hotel
Blood Magic
One Door Away from H...
The Birth House
The Gates of Rome
NemesisBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
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