Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

“I must not fear. 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 I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

This passage is just incredible.

“But I thought Mentat training had to start during infancy and the subject couldn’t be told because it might inhibit the early….” He broke off, all his past circumstances coming to focus in one flashing computation. “I see,” he said.

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”

Still, she found the thought unsettling that water was a major mark of wealth here.

“My Lady, when one has lived with prophecy for so long, the moment of revelation is a shock.”

It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.

the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.

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

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife—chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: “Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.”

“I never could bring myself to trust a traitor,” the Baron said. “Not even a traitor I created.”

They’ll call me…Muad’Dib, ‘The One Who Points the Way.’

*shivers*

“Do as she says, you wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd! Do it or I’ll help her dismember you!

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.

“Paradise on my right, Hell on my left, and the Angel of Death behind.”

Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future…the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present and the one-eyed vision of the future—all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space.

“There’s a Bene Gesserit saying,” she said. “You have sayings for everything!” he protested. “You’ll like this one,” she said. “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.

A faint green-pearl luminescence etched the eastern horizon. The tents of his troop were small false dunes around him in the gloom.

“Who rules here?” Paul asked. He raised his fist. “I rule here! I rule on every square inch of Arrakis! This is my ducal fief whether the Emperor says yea or nay! He gave it to my father and it comes to me through my father!”

You tell em Paul