Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

“You…captured Sardaukar?” “Only three of them,” the Fremen said. “They fought well.”

A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.”

“Remain silent as frightened animals,” the Fremen hissed.

Behind Hawat, one of his men whispered: “Those were Sardaukar!” “Did you notice how well they fought?” the Fremen asked.

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

“You’ve recognized this place correctly,” Kynes said. “For what would you use such a place, Paul Atreides?” “To make this planet a fit place for humans,” Paul said. Perhaps that’s why I help them, Kynes thought.

Jessica marked the easy rumble of the man’s voice. It was a royal voice, accustomed to command.

Law is the ultimate science,’” Paul quoted. “Thus it reads above the Emperor’s door. I propose to show him law.”

“No Harkonnen ever admitted error. Perhaps you’re not like them, Atreides.”

“I should’ve suspected trouble when the coffee failed to arrive,” Kynes said.

And he realized with an abrupt sense of shock that he had been giving more and more reliance to prescient memory and it had weakened him for this particular emergency.

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

If I scattered sand before this creature and told him it was grain, he’d peck at it.

I’ve noticed a thing about our allies, Nefud. They’re not very devious…politically. I do believe this is a deliberate thing; the Emperor wants it that way.

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.

“It’d have to be sounds without rhythm,” Jessica said.

“You seem to know a great deal about the Harkonnens.” “Hints and suggestions…rumors and hunches.”

three things there are that ease the heart—water, green grass, and the beauty of woman.”

Subtlety and self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats to us all.

A salt pan glared white there with a blending of dirty tan at its edges—a field of white out here where white was death. But the pan said another thing: water. At some time water had flowed across that glaring white.

The night is a tunnel, she thought, a hole into tomorrow…if

“We must walk without rhythm,”

“Most intruders here regret finding the Fremen!”

“The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences.”

“The more life there is within a system, the more niches there are for life,”

“Life improves the capacity of the environment to sustain life,” his father said. “Life makes needed nutrients more readily available. It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous chemical interplay from organism to organism.”

“We are generalists,” his father said. “You can’t draw neat lines around planet-wide problems. Planetology is a cut-and-fit science.”

“To the working planetologist, his most important tool is human beings,” his father said. “You must cultivate ecological literacy among the people. That’s why I’ve created this entirely new form of ecological notation.”

“Our first goal on Arrakis,” his father said, “is grassland provinces. We will start with these mutated poverty grasses. When we have moisture locked in grasslands, we’ll move on to start upland forests, then a few open bodies of water—small at first—and situated along lines of prevailing winds with windtrap moisture precipitators spaced in the lines to recapture what the wind steals. We must create a true sirocco—a moist wind—but we will never get away from the necessity for windtraps.”

“You will die, too,” his father said, “if you don’t get off the bubble that’s forming right now deep underneath you. It’s there and you know it. You can smell the pre-spice gasses. You know the little makers are beginning to lose some of their water into the mass.”

“Movement across the landscape is a necessity for animal life,” his father said. “Nomad peoples follow the same necessity. Lines of movement adjust to physical needs for water, food, minerals. We must control this movement now, align it for our purposes.”

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.

“Cignoro hrobosa sukares hin mange la pchagavas doi me kamavas na beslas lele pal hrobas!”

It was Chakobsa, one of the ancient hunting languages,

“Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!

The voice of a young boy or a girl sounded from the darkness above Paul: “But, Stil, he can’t be far from—” “I said leave him be, Chani! You spawn of a lizard!” There came a whispered imprecation from above Paul and a low voice: “Call me spawn of a lizard!” But the shadow pulled back out of view.

“I am Chani, daughter of Liet.”

The figure in front of him turned into the moon’s path and he saw an elfin face, black pits of eyes. The familiarity of that face, the features out of numberless visions in his earliest prescience, shocked Paul to stillness.

All of them, she thought, an entire culture trained to military order. What a priceless thing is here for an outcast Duke!

“Bribes are dangerous; they have a way of growing larger and larger.” “They grow,” he said, “but the slow way is the safe way.”

A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”

The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too, was action with its consequences.

You must remember that he was an emperor, father-head of a dynasty that reached back into the dimmest history. But we denied him a legal son. Was this not the most terrible defeat a ruler ever suffered?

My mother obeyed her Sister Superiors where the Lady Jessica disobeyed. Which of them was the stronger? History already has answered.

The ones who carried their pack say there’s literjons of water in it. Literjons!

“When in doubt of your surface, bare feet are best.”

Jamis called out in ritual challenge: “May thy knife chip and shatter!” This knife will break then, Paul thought.

Variable piled on variable—that was why this cave lay as a blurred nexus in his path.

“Keep the mind on the knife and not on the hand that holds it,” Gurney Halleck had told him time and again. “The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.”