Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

Even while he remained in the dream, Paul knew he would remember it upon awakening. He always remembered the dreams that were predictions.

“Jessica, have you ever stopped hating me?” the old woman asked. “I both love and hate you,” Jessica said. “The hate—that’s from pains I must never forget. The love—that’s….”

“‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’”

“They compose poems to their knives. Their women are as fierce as the men.

Not since the day when the Duke’s buyers had taken her from the school had she felt this frightened and unsure of herself.

“I know many things,” Jessica said. “I know that you have borne children, that you have lost loved ones, that you have hidden in fear and that you have done violence and will yet do more violence. I know many things.”

“What better way to destroy me than to sow suspicion of the woman I love?”

There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh.

If there’s a relationship between spice and worms, killing the worms would destroy the spice.

“It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness.”

“Do not make the error of considering my son a child,” the Duke said. And he smiled.

“Our host and hostess are quite capable of deciding for themselves when they’ve been insulted,”

“One baits an Atreides at his own risk.”

There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

Is it defeatist or treacherous for a doctor to diagnose a disease correctly?

I was wrong not to take Jessica into my confidence from the first.

Perhaps that’s it, Paul thought. I’ll mourn my father later…when there’s time.

“You’re thinking I’m the Kwisatz Haderach,” he said. “Put that out of your mind. I’m something unexpected.”

And he closed his eyes, thinking: Now, my father, I can mourn you. And he felt the tears coursing down his cheeks.

This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow’s life.

“Keep your shield, Duncan. Your right arm is shield enough for me.”

It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.

I’m afraid of my son; I fear his strangeness; I fear what he may see ahead of us, what he may tell me.

And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life—we went soft, we lost our edge.

Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

He was honorable and brave, but it was stupid to put himself in the way of the Harkonnen fist!”

“Your son made an incredible amount of noise climbing. He has much to learn lest he endanger us all, but he’s young.” “No doubt we have much to teach each other,” Jessica said. “Meanwhile, you’d best see to your companion out there. My noisy son was a bit rough in disarming him.”

“I was a friend of Jamis,” Paul whispered. He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. “Jamis taught me…that…when you kill…you pay for it. I wish I’d known Jamis better.”

She returned his stare serenely, but her voice carried whiplash as she said: “You do not have my permission.”

“It goes: ‘Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.’”

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

“Any area is open to my speculation if it does what you’ve hired me to do,” Hawat said. “I am a Mentat. You do not withhold information or computation lines from a Mentat.”

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”

thought: I cannot do the simplest thing without its becoming a legend. They will mark how I parted from Chani, how I greet Stilgar—every move I make this day. Live or die, it is a legend.

“Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?”

“One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste.

I suddenly see how I’ve used you and twisted you and manipulated you to set you on a course of my choosing…a course I had to choose—if that’s any excuse—because of my own training.” She swallowed past a lump in her throat, looked up into her son’s eyes. “Paul…I want you to do something for me: choose the course of happiness.

“How could you do such a foolish thing?” she demanded. “He is your son,” Chani said.

“I am Alia, daughter of Duke Leto and the Lady Jessica, sister of Duke Paul-Muad’Dib,” the child said. She pushed herself off the dais, dropped to the floor of the audience chamber. “My brother has promised to have your head atop his battle standard and I think he shall.”

“Thufir, old friend,” Paul said, “as you can see, my back is toward no door.”

“Jessica!” the old woman screamed. “Silence him!” “Silence him yourself,” Jessica said.

“Muad’Dib need not do this thing,” Chani said. He glanced at her, saw the fear for him in her eyes. “But the Duke Paul must,” he said.

“You will negotiate for me, Mother, with Chani by your side. She has wisdom and sharp eyes. And it is wisely said that no one bargains tougher than a Fremen. She will be looking through the eyes of her love for me and with the thought of her sons to be, what they will need. Listen to her.”

While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.”