Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)

by Frank Herbert

‘Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?

Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”

The Duke felt in this moment that his own dearest dream was to end all class distinctions and never again think of deadly order.

it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan.

“Parting with people is a sadness; a place is only a place.”

“Men and their works have been a disease on the surface of their planets before now,” his father said. “Nature tends to compensate for diseases, to remove or encapsulate them, to incorporate them into the system in her own way.”

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.

“It’s the strangeness of my daughter, is that it?” Jessica asked. “It’s the way she speaks of things beyond her years and of things no child her age could know—

“I will tell them that Alia only pretends to be a little girl, that she has never been a little girl.” Alia shook her head. Tears ran down her cheeks, and Jessica felt the wave of sadness from her daughter as though the emotion were her own. “I know I’m a freak,” Alia whispered. The adult summation coming from the child mouth was like a bitter confirmation.

“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it,” Paul said.

“Interrupt me once more, Baron,” the Emperor said, “and you will lose the powers of interruption … forever.”