Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

“Killing with the point lacks artistry,”

“Needs a naming, Stil.”

Ichwan Bedwine,

God created Arrakis to train the faithful.

“Ima trava okolo! I korenja okolo!” Jessica translated silently: These are ashes! And these are roots!

“Your suit will be more comfortable when you’ve adjusted to a lower water content in your body,” Stilgar had said. She knew he was right, but the knowledge made this moment no more comfortable.

“From water does all life begin.”

A violent calamity of color spilled over the sky as the sun dipped beneath the horizon.

The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.

“Usul gives moisture to the dead!”

She saw a profound clue to Fremen technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists.

Chani’s voice intruded from the deep cave darkness: “Tell me about the waters of your birthworld, Paul-Muad’Dib.” And Paul: “Another time, Chani. I promise.”

My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy.

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

Feyd-Rautha found the man’s actions and words almost insulting. They stopped just short of something overt that would require notice.

There he goes again, Feyd-Rautha thought. It sounds like he’s being insulting, but there’s nothing you can call out for satisfaction.

“There’s a cone of silence between two of the pillars over here on our left,”

leaped

“It’s easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.”

There was an orthographic thing on his face now for every watcher to recognize. The death was written there.

With the admiration came the realization that here was truly a thing to fear. That which makes a man superhuman is terrifying.

“His ah-h-h synaptic responses are very swift,” she said.

“We’ll leave as soon as possible—as soon as you’re sure,” he said. She shuddered. “By all means. I should not want to bear a child in this terrible place.”

“Guilt starts as a feeling of failure,”

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

the month of Caprock.

A whispered command behind them demanded silence: “The desert hears you!”

lighted

“Hai!” she said, and there was a whole conversation in the one word.

It came to him that he was surrounded by a way of life that could only be understood by postulating an ecology of ideas and values.

He stood there a moment caught by uncertainty. And he wondered where Chani was…Chani who had just lost her father. We’re alike in that, he thought.

She estimated there were more than five thousand people gathered out there beneath the ledge where she stood with Stilgar.

There were at least ten thousand people on the rock floor now. And still they came.

“We are the people of Misr,” the old woman rasped. “Since our Sunni ancestors fled from Nilotic al-Ourouba, we have known flight and death. The young go on that our people shall not die.”

some twenty thousand people now,

“The Reverend Mother tells me she cannot survive another hajra,”

“Be thankful it’s a daughter you carry. This would’ve killed a male fetus.

“I’ve been a long time waiting for you,” she said. “Here is my life.” There it was, encapsuled, all of it. Even the moment of death.

And the memory-mind encapsulated within her opened itself to Jessica, permitting a view down a wide corridor to other Reverend Mothers until there seemed no end to them.

And I say: “Look! I have no hands!” But the people all around me say: “What are hands?”

He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future.

“We are alike in a thing, Usul: We have each lost a father to the Harkonnens.”

“You must tell me,” she whispered. “You are Sihaya,” he said, “the desert spring.”

“You cannot back into the future,” he said.

“You’re the strong one, Chani,” he muttered. “Stay with me.” “Always,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

“If you had finesse and subtlety to match such courage, you’d be truly formidable.”

Feyd-Rautha stared at him. A bargain! He means to keep me as his heir for certain, then. Else why bargain? One bargains with equals or near equals!

The man without emotions is the one to fear. But deep emotions…ah, now, those can be bent to your needs.”

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.

He babbles too much, Hawat thought. He’s not like Leto who could tell me a thing with the lift of an eyebrow or the wave of a hand. Nor like the Old Duke who could express an entire sentence in the way he accented a single word. This is a clod! Destroying him will be a service to mankind.