My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.
Frank HerbertRead
The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Sentiment involves genuine concern, while being sentimental can lead to unintended negative consequences.
Frank Herbert's quote highlights the distinction between having real feelings (sentiment) and being overly emotional (sentimental), suggesting that while genuine care can lead to positive actions, excessive sentimentality may result in adverse outcomes. It critiques how sometimes, in our attempts to protect or save something we value, we might end up causing harm to others or creating greater problems.
Themes
SentimentSentimentalEmotionConsequencesCare
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion about decision-making ethics, this quote can be used to illustrate the complexities of emotional responses.
More from Frank Herbert
All quotes →If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!
Frank HerbertRead
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
Frank HerbertRead
To know a thing well, know it's limits; Only when pushed beyond it's tolerance will it's true nature be seen. -The Amtal Rule
Frank HerbertRead
Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.
Frank HerbertRead
It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.
Frank HerbertRead
Similar quotes
Embrace your grief. For there, your soul will grow.
Carl JungRead
After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!
Jerome K. JeromeRead
Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Ronald ReaganRead
The true man of the past waited upon Heaven when dealing with people and did not wait upon people when dealing with Heaven.
ZhuangziRead
Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.
Johann Georg HamannRead
I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.
Robert Louis StevensonRead