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Collected Sayings of The Dune Chronicles
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Paul
Atreides
There
exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual
to the other.
Proverbs of Muad'Dib
Dune Messiah 11
Once
more the drama begins.
The Emperor Paul Muad'Dib on his ascension to the Lion Throne
Dune Messiah 85
Production
growth and income growth must not get out of step in my Empire. That
is the substance of my command. There are to be no balance-of-payment
difficulties between the different spheres of influence. And the reason
for this is simply because I command it. I want to emphasize my authority
in this area. I am the supreme energy-eater of this domain, and will
remain so, alive or dead. My government is the economy.
Order in Council
The Emperor Paul Muad'Dib
Dune 223
The
convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide
from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving
a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there
exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed
his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but
behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy."
Addenda to Orders in Council
The Emperor Paul Muad'Dib
Dune Messiah 237
The
Fremen must return to his original faith, to his genius in forming human
communities; he must return to the past, where that lesson of survival
was learned in the struggle for Arrakis. The only business of the Fremen
should be that of opening his soul to the inner teachings. The worlds
of the Imperium, the Landsraad and the CHOAM Confederacy have no message
to give him. They will only rob him of his soul.
The Preacher at Arrakeen
Children of Dune 20
Atrocity
is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn
about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating
argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely
arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself
-- a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits
those future atrocities thus bred.
The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib
Children of Dune 102
I
will not argue with the Fremen claims that they are divinely inspired
to transmit a religious revelation. It is their concurrent claim to
ideological revelation which inspires me to shower them with derision.
Of course, they make the dual claim in the hope that it will strengthen
their mandarinate and help them to endure in a universe which finds
them increasingly oppressive. It is in the name of all those oppressed
people that i warn the Fremen: short-term expediency always fails in
the long term.
The Preacher at Arrakeen
Children of Dune 110
This
is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an absolute,
a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe
is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power. Paul
Muad'Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen.
His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves.
The Preacher at Arrakeen
Children of Dune 154
You
Bene Gesserit call your activity of the Panoplia Prophetica a "Science
of Religion." Very well. I, a seeker after another kind of scientist,
find this an appropriate definition. You do, indeed, build your own
myths, but so do all societies. You I must warn, however. You are behaving
as so many other misguided scientists have behaved. Your actions reveal
that you wish to take something out of [away from] life. It is
time you were reminded of that which you so often profess: One cannot
have a single thing without its opposite.
The Preacher at Arrakeen:
A Message to the Sisterhood
Children of Dune 171
The
universe is just there; that's the only way a Fedaykin can view
it and remain the master of his senses. The universe neither threatens
nor promises. It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor,
the eruption of a spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities
of this universe and they must be faced regardless of how you feel about them. You cannot fend off such realities with words. They will
come at you in their own wordless way and then, then you will So understand
what is meant by "life and death." Understanding this, you will be filled
with joy.
Muad'Dib to his Fedaykin
Children of Dune 179
O
Paul, thou Muad'Dib,
Mahdi of all men,
Thy breath exhaled
Sent forth the huricen.
Songs of Muad'Dib
Children of Dune 259
Humankind
periodically goes through a speedup of its affairs, thereby experiencing
the race between the renewable vitality of the living and the beckoning
vitiation of decadence. In this periodic race, any pause becomes luxury.
Only then can one reflect that all is permitted; all is possible.
The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib
Children of Dune 276
What
you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom
find real loyalties in the commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk
giving his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the
false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate. This
has been a failure of everything from religions to general staffs throughout
history. General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations.
As to religions, I recommend a rereading of Thomas Aquinas. As to you
of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe! Men must want to do things out
of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations
or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every
civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.
If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge
to greatness -- they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
A letter to CHOAM Attributed to the Preacher
Children of Dune 306
The
Fremen see her as the Earth Figure, a demi-goddess whose special charge
is to protect the tribes through her powers of violence. She is Reverend
Mother to their Reverend Mothers. To pilgrims who seeks her out with
demands that she restore virility or make the barren fruitful, she is
a form of antimentat. She feeds on that proof that the "analytic" has
limits. She represents ultimate tension. She is the virgin-harlot --
witty, vulgar, cruel, as destructive in her whims as a coriolis storm.
St. Alia of the Knife
as taken from The Irulan Report
Dune Messiah 109
I
think what a joy it is to be alive, and I wonder if I'll ever leap inward
to the root of this flesh and know myself as one I was. The root is
there. Whether any act of mine can find it, that remains tangled in
the future. But all things a man can do are mine. Any act of mine may
do it.
The Ghola Speaks
Alia's Commentary
Dune Messiah 157
The
advent of the Field Process shield and the lasgun with their deadly
explosive interaction, deadly to attacker and attacked, placed the current
determinatives on weapons technology. We need not go into the special
role of atomics. The fact that any Family in my Empire could so deploy
its atomics as to destroy the planetary bases of fifty or more other
Families causes some nervousness, true. But all of us possess precautionary
plans for devastating retaliation. Guild and Landsraad contain the keys
which hold this force in check. No, my concern goes to the development
of humans as special weapons. Here is a virtually unlimited field which
a few powers are developing.
Muad'Dib: Lecture to the War College
from the Stilgar Chronicle
Dune Messiah 49
You
do not beg the sun for mercy.
Muad'Dib's Travail
from the Stilgar Commentary
Dune Messiah 167
There
exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without
destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government.
Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of vengeance,
never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created.
You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.
Muad'Dib on Law
The Stilgar Commentary
Dune Messiah 289
A
Fremen dies when he is too long from the desert; this we call "the water
sickness."
Stilgar, the Commentaries
Children of Dune 123
It
is said of Muad'Dib that once when he saw a weed trying to grow between
two rocks, he moved one of the rocks, he moved one of the rocks. Later,
when the weed was seen to be flourishing, he covered it with the remaining
rock. "That was its fate," he explained.
The Commentaries
Children of Dune 183
I
saw his blood and a piece of his robe which had been ripped by sharp
claws. His sister reports vividly of the tigers, the sureness of their
attack. We have questioned one of the plotters, and others are dead
or in custody. Everything points to a Corrino plot. A Truthsayer has
attested to this testimony.
Stilgar's Report to the Landsraad Commission
Children of Dune 216
I've
had a bellyful of the god and priest business! You think U don't see
my own mythos? Consult your data once more, Hayt. I've insinuated my
rites into the most elementary human acts. The people eat in the name
of Muad'Dib! They make love in my name, are born in my name -- cross
the street in my name. A roof beam cannot be raised in the lowliest
hovel of far Gangishree without invoking the blessing of Muad'Dib?
Book of Diatribes
from The Hayt Chronicle
Dune Messiah 183
No
bitter stench of funeral-still for Muad'Dib
No knell nor solemn rite to free the mind
From avaricious shadows.
He is the fool saint,
The golden stranger living forever
On the edge of reason.
Let your guard fall and he is there!
His crimson peace and sovereign pallor
Strike into our universe on prophetic webs
To the verge of a quite glance -- there!
Out of the bristling star-jungles:
Mysterious, lethal, an oracle without eyes,
Catspaw of prophecy, whose voice never dies!
Shai-Hulud, he awaits thee upon a strand
Where couples walk and fix, eye to eye,
The delicious ennui of love.
He strides through the long cavern of time,
Scattering the fool-self of his dream.
The Ghola's Hymn
Dune Messiah 331
Muad'Dib's
teachings have become the playground of scholastics, of the superstitious
and the corrupt. He taught a balanced way of life, a philosophy with
which a human can meet problems arising from an ever-changing universe.
He said humankind is still evolving, in a process which will never end.
He said this evolution moves on changing principles which are know only
to eternity. How can corrupted reasoning play with such an essence.
Words of the Mentat Duncan Idaho
Children of Dune 1
I
give you the desert chameleon, whose ability to blend itself into the
background tells you all you need to know about the roots of ecology
and the foundations of a personal identity.
Book of Diatribes from the Hayt Chronicle
Children of Dune 28
CHALLENGE: "Have you seen The Preacher?"
RESPONSE: "I have seen a sandworm."
CHALLENGE: "What about that sandworm?"
RESPONSE: "It give us the air we breathe."
CHALLENGE: "Then why do we destroy its land?"
RESPONSE: "Because Shai-Hulud [sandworm deified] orders it."
"Riddles of Arrakis" by Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 7
Either
we abandon the long-honored Theory of Relativity, or we cease to believe
that we can engage in continued accurate prediction of the future. Indeed,
knowing the future raises a host of questions which cannot be answered
under conventional assumptions unless one first projects an Observer
outside of Time and, second, nullifies all movement. If you accept the
Theory of Relativity, it can be shown that Time and the Observer must
stand still in relationship to each or inaccuracies will intervene.
This would seem to say that it is impossible to engage in accurate prediction
of the future. How, then, do we explain the continued seeking after
this visionary goal by respected scientists? How, then, do we explain
Muad'Dib?
Lectures on Prescience by Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 49
This
was Muad'Dib's achievement: He saw the subliminal reservoir of each
individual as an unconscious bank of memories going back to the primal
cell of our common genesis. Each of us, he said, can measure out his
distance from that common origin. Seeing this and telling of it, he
made the audacious leap of decision. Muad'Dib set himself the task of
integrating genetic memory into ongoing evaluation. Thus did he break
through Time's veils, making a single thing of the future and the past.
That was Muad'Dib's creation embodied in his son and his daughter.
Testament of Arrakis by Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 82
Natural
selection has been described as an environment selectively screening
for those who will have progeny. Where humans are concerned, though,
this is an extremely limiting viewpoint. Reproduction by sex tends toward
experiment and innovation. It raises many questions, including the ancient
one about whether environment is a selective agents after the variation
occurs, or whether environment plays a pre-selective role in determining
the variations which it screens. Dune did not really answer those questions:
it merely raised new questions which Leto and the Sisterhood may attempt
to answer over the next five hundred generations.
The Dune Catastrophe After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 284
Peace
demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions; we only work
toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The
trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding
brilliance.
The Words of My Father: an account of Muad'Dib reconstructed by Harq
al-Ada
Children of Dune 295
There
exist obvious higher-order influences in any planetary system. This
is often demonstrated by introducing terraform life onto newly discovered
planets. In all such cases, the life in similar zones develops striking
similarities of adaptive form. This form signifies much more than shape;
it connects a survival organization and a relationship of such organizations.
The human quest for this interdependent order and our niche within it
represents a profound necessity. The quest can, however, be perverted
into a conservative grip on sameness. This has always proved deadly
for the entire system.
The Dune Catastrophe after Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 304
And
he saw the vision of armor. The armor was not his own skin: it was stronger
than plasteel. Nothing penetrated his armor -- not knife or poison or
sand, not the dust of the desert or its desiccating heat. In his right
hand he carried the power to make the Coriolis storm, to shake the earth
and erode it into nothing. His eyes were fixed upon the Golden Path
and in his left hand he carried the scepter of absolute mastery. And
beyond the Golden Path, his eyes looked into eternity which he knew
to be the food of his soul and of his everlasting flesh.
Heighia, My Brother's Dream from the Book of Ghanima
Children of Dune 92
I
hear the wind blowing across the desert and I see the moons of a winter
night rising like great ships in the void. To them I make my vow: I
will be resolute and make an art of government: I will balance my inherited
past and become a perfect storehouse of my relic memories. And I will
be known for kindliness more than for knowledge. My face will shine
down the corridors of time for as long as humans exist.
Leto's Vow After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 55
A
sophisticated human can become primitive. What this really means is
that the human's way of life changed. Old values change, become linked
to the landscape with its plants and animals. This new existence requires
a working knowledge of those multiplex and cross-linked events usually
referred to as nature. It requires a measure of respect, for
the internal power within such natural systems. When a human
gains this working knowledge and respect, that is called "being primitive." The converse, of course, is equally true: the primitive can become sophisticated,
but not without accepting dreadful psychological damage.
The Leto Commentary After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 69
The
life of a single human, as the life of a family or an entire people,
persists as memory. My people must come to see this as part of their
maturing process. They are people as organism, and in this persistent
memory they store more and more experiences in a subliminal reservoir.
Humankind hopes to call upon this material if it is needed for a changing
universe. But much that is stored can be lost in that chance play of
accident which we call "fate." Much may not be integrated into evolutionary
relationships, and thus may not be evaluated and keyed into activity
by those ongoing environmental changes which inflict themselves upon
flesh. The species can forget! This is the special value of the
Kwisatz Haderach which the Bene Gesserits never suspected: the Kwisatz
Haderach cannot forget.
The Book of Leto After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 119
The
assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent universe,
taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect become a
totally aware balancing instrument. But the intellect cannot react thus
without involving the entire organism. Such an organism may be recognized
by its burning, driving behavior. And thus it is with a society treated
as organism. But here we encounter an old inertia. Societies move to
the goading of ancient, reactive impulses. They demand permanence. Any
attempt to display the universe of impermanence arouse rejection patterns,
fear, anger, and despair. Then how do we explain the acceptance of prescience?
Simply: the giver of prescient visions, because he speaks of an absolute
(permanent) realization, may be greeted with joy by humankind even while
predicting the most dire events.
The Book of Leto After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 137
We
can still remember the golden days before Heisenberg, who showed humans
the walls enclosing our predestined arguments. The lives within me find
this amusing. Knowledge,you see, has no uses without purpose, but purpose
is what builds enclosing walls.
Leto Atreides II
His Voice
Children of Dune 241
There
is no guilt or innocence in you. All of that is past. Guilt belabors
the dead and I am not the Iron Hammer. You multitude of the dead are
merely people who have done certain things, and the memory of those
things illuminates my path.
Leto II to His Memory-Lives After Harq al-Ada
Children of Dune 273
One
small bird has called thee
From a beak streaked crimson.
It cried once over Sietch Tabr
And thou went forth unto Funeral Plain.
Lament for Leto II
Children of Dune 290
When
I set out to lead humanity along my Golden Path I promised a lesson
their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern humans deny with
words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security
and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create
seeds of turmoil and violence.
Leto II, the God Emperor
Chapterhouse: Dune 9
You
cannot know history unless you know how leaders move with its currents.
Every leader requires outsiders to perpetuate his leadership. Examine
my career: I was leader and outsider. Do not assume I merely created
a Church-State. That was my function as leader and I followed historical
models. Barbaric arts of my time reveal me as outsider. Favorite poetry:
epics. Popular dramatic ideal: heroism. Dancers: wildly abandoned. Stimulants
to make people sense what I took from them. What did I take? The right
to choose a role in history.
Leto II, the God Emperor
Vether Bebe Translation
Chapterhouse: Dune 32
Time
does not count itself. You have only to look at a circle and this is
apparent.
Leto II (The Tyrant)
Chapterhouse: Dune 191
The
most dangerous game in the universe is to govern from an oracular base.
We do not consider ourselves wise enough or brave enough to play that
game. The measures detailed here for regulation in lesser matters are
as near as we dare venture to the brink of government. For our purposes,
we borrow a definition from the Bene Gesserit and we consider the various
worlds as gene pools, sources of teachings and teachers, sources of
the possible. Our goal is not to rules, but to tap these gene pools,
to learn, and to free ourselves from all restraints imposed by dependency
and government.
"The Orgy as a Tool of Statecraft
Chapter Three of The Steersman's Guild
Dune Messiah 123
Good
government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities
of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate
to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important
element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
Law and Governance
The Spacing Guild Manual
Children of Dune 148
The
person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new
way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened
by such demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then
Changer comes and throws our old ideas away.
The Zensufi Master
Chapterhouse: Dune 12
Uproot
your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be seen.
More questions!
Mentat Zensufi
Chapterhouse: Dune 220
You
cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string.
The Zensunni Whip
Chapterhouse: Dune 43
Ultimately,
all things are known because you want to believe you know.
Zensunni koan
Chapterhouse: Dune 361
Answers
are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain
nothing.
The Zensunni Whip
Chapterhouse: Dune 369
Paired
opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.
The Zensunni Whip
Chapterhouse: Dune 431
The
writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical
accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great
events.
The Bashar Miles Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 70
The
true warrior often understands his enemy better than he understands
his friends. A dangerous pitfall if you let understanding lead to sympathy
as it will naturally do when left unguided.
Miles Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 169
Ish
yara al-ahdab hadbat-u. (A hunchback does not see his own hunch. --
Folk Saying.)
Bene Gesserit Commentary: The hunch may be seen with the aid of mirrors
but mirrors may show the whole being.
The Bashar Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 308
Battle?
There is always a desire for breathing space motivating it somewhere.
The Bashar Teg
Chapterhouse: Dune 385
Here
lies a toppled god --
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.
Tleilaxu Epigram
Dune Messiah 141
Every
civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block,
betray or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.
Tleilaxu Theorem (unproven)
Dune Messiah 31
No
matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments
of life and society, nor the complexity of the machine/human interface,
there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind,
the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions
of single individuals.
from the Tleilaxu Godbuk
Dune Messiah 209
Corruption
wears infinite disguises.
Tleilaxu Thu-zen
Chapterhouse: Dune 83
When
are the witches to be trusted? Never! The dark side of the magic universe
belongs to the Bene Gesserit and we must reject them.
Tylwyth Waff
Master of Masters
Chapterhouse: Dune 337
What
do Holy Accidents teach? Be resilient. Be strong. Be ready for change,
for the new. Gather many experiences and judge them by the steadfast
nature of our faith.
Tleilaxu Doctrine
Chapterhouse: Dune 413
Above
all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise
to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts
and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless
nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist,
on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common
sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening
in this universe. He must remain capable of saying: "There's no real
mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove
wrong later, but we'll correct that when we come to it." The mentat-generalist
must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe
is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he
looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist
looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that
such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics
of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be
no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must
look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself:
"Now what is this thing doing?"
The Mentat Handbook
Children of Dune 221
You
will learn the integrated communication methods as you complete the
next step in your mental education. This is a gestalten function which
will overlay data paths in your awareness, resolving complexities and
masses of input from the mentat index-catalogue techniques which you
already have mastered. Your initial problem will be the breaking tensions
arising from the divergent assembly of mentat overlay integration, you
can be immersed in the Babel Problem, which is the label we give to
the omnipresent dangers of achieving wrong combinations from accurate
information.
The Mentat Handbook
Children of Dune 253
Education
is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only
in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles
reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definitions.
Mentat Text One (decto)
Chapterhouse: Dune 94
Many
things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them
intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject
that you become ignorant.
Mentat Text Two (decto)
Chapterhouse: Dune 103
Ready
comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form
of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability
to learn. The judgmental precedents of law function that way, littering
your path with dead ends. Be warned. Understanding nothing. All comprehension
is temporary.
Mentat Fixe (adacto)
Chapterhouse: Dune 178
Uproot
your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be seen.
More questions!
Mentat Zensufi
Chapterhouse: Dune 220
TO
THE LADY JESSICA --
May this place give you as much pleasure as it had given me. Please
permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers:
the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On
that path lies danger.
My kindest wishes,
MARGOT LADY FENRING
Dune 72
Beyond
a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers
increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary
ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question
is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind
of existence is possible for the who do survive.
Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
Dune 493
Such
a rich store of myths enfolds Paul Muad'Dib, the Mentat Emperor, and
his sister, Alia, it is difficult to see the real persons behind these
veils. But there were, after all, a man born Paul Atreides and a woman
born Alia. Their flesh was subject to space and time. And even though
their oracular powers placed them beyond the usual limits of time and
space, they came from human stock. They experienced real events which
left real traces upon a real universe. To understand them, it must be
seen that their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind. This
work is dedicated, then, not to Muad'Dib or his sister, but to their
heirs -- to all of us.
Dedication in the Muad'Dib Concordance as copied from The Tabla Memorium
of the Mahdi Spirit Cult
Dune Messiah 7
Truth
suffers from too much analysis.
Ancient Fremen Saying
Dune Messiah 99
Oh,
worm of many teeth,
Canst thou deny what has no cure?
The flesh and breath which lure thee
To the ground of all beginnings
Feed on monsters twisting in a door of fire!
Thou hast no robe in all thy attire
To cover intoxications of divinity
Or hide the burnings of desire!
Wormsong
from the Dunebook
Dune Messiah 191
The
audacious nature of Muad'Dib's actions may be seen in the fact that
He knew from the beginning whither He was bound, yet not once did He
step aside from that path. He put it clearly when He said: "I tell you
that I come now to my time of testing when it will be shown that I am
the Ultimate Servant." Thus He weaves all into One, that both friend
and foe may worship Him. It is for this reason and this reason only
that His Apostles prayed: "Lord, save us from the other paths which
Muad'Dib covered with the Waters of His Life." Those "other paths" may
be imagined only with the deepest revulsion.
from The Yiam-el-Din (Book of Judgment)
Dune Messiah 199
Tibana
was an apologist for Socratic Christianity, probably a native of IV
Anbus who lived between the eight and ninth centuries before Corrino,
likely in the second reign of Dalamak. Of his writings, only a portion
survives from which this fragment is taken: "The hearts of all men dwell
in the same wilderness."
from the Dunebuk of Irulan
Dune Messiah 265
The
sequential nature of actual events is not illuminated with lengthy precision
by the powers of prescience except under the most extraordinary circumstances.
The oracle grasps incidents cut out of the historic chain. Eternity
moves. It inflicts itself upon the oracle and the supplicant alike.
Let Muad'Dib's subjects doubt his majesty and his oracular visions.
Let them deny his powers. Let them never doubt Eternity.
The Dune Gospels
Dune Messiah 277
We
say of Muad'Dib that he has gone on a journey into that land where we
walk without footprints.
Preamble to the Qizarate Creed
Dune Messiah 321
The
sietch at the desert's rim
Was Liet's, was Kynes's,
Was Stilgar's, was Muad'Dib's
And, once more, was Stilgar's.
The Naibs one by one sleep in the sand,
But the sietch endures.
from a Fremen Song
Children of Dune 13
melange
(me'-lange, also ma,lanj) n-s, origin uncertain (thought
to derive from ancient Terran Franzh): a. mixture of spices; b. spice
of Arrakis (Dune) with geriatric properties first noted by Yanshuph
Askoko, royal chemist in reign of Shakkad the Wise; Arrakeen melange,
found only in deepest desert sands of Arrakis, linked to prophetic visions
of Paul Muad'Dib (Atreides), first Fremen Mahdi; also employed by Spacing
Guild Navigators and the Bene Gesserit.
Dictionary Royal fifth edition
Children of Dune 17
The
Universe is God's. It is one thing, a wholeness against which
all separations may be identified. Transient life, even that self-aware
and reasoning life which we call sentient, holds only fragile trusteeship
on any portion of the wholeness.
Commentaries from the C.E.T.
(Commission of Ecumenical Translators)
Children of Dune 36
And
I beheld another beast coming up out of the sand; and he had two horns
like a lamb, but his mouth was fanged and fiery as the dragon and his
body shimmered and burned with great heat while it did hiss like the
serpent.
Revised Orange Catholic Bible
Children of Dune 38
It
is commonly reported, my dear Georad, that there exists great natural
virtue in the melange experience. Perhaps this is true. There remain
within me, however, profound doubts that every use of melange always
brings virtue. Meseems that certain persons have corrupted the use of
melange in defiance of God. In the words of the Ecumenon, they have
disfigured the soul. The skim the surface of melange and believe thereby
to attain grace. They deride their fellows, do great harm to godliness,
and they distort the meaning of this abundant gift maliciously, surely
a mutilation beyond the power of man to restore. To be truly at one
with the virtue of the spice, uncorrupted in all ways, full of goodly
honor, a man must permit his deeds and his words to agree. When your
actions describe a system of evil consequences, you should be judged
by those consequences and not by your explanations. It is thus that
we should judge Muad'Dib.
The Pedant Heresy
Children of Dune 43
You
have loved Caladan
And lamented its lost host --
But pain discovers
New lovers cannot erase
Those forever ghost.
Refrain from The Habbanya Lament
Children of Dune 131
When
I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according
to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom
because that is according to my principles.
Words of an ancient philosopher (Attributed by Harq al-Ada to one
Louis Veuillot)
Children of Dune 166
In
this age when the means of human transport include devices which can
span the deeps of space in transtime, and other devices which can carry
men swiftly over virtually impassable planetary surfaces, it seems odd
to think of attempting long journeys afoot. Yet this remains a primary
means of travel on Arrakis, a face attributed partly to preference and
partly to the brutal treatment which this planet reserves for anything
mechanical. In the strictures of Arrakis, human flesh remains the most
durable and reliable resource fro the Hajj. Perhaps it is the implicit
awareness of this fact which makes Arrakis the ultimate mirror of the
soul.
Handbook of the Hajj
Children of Dune 196
The
password was given to me by a man who died in the dungeons of Arrakeen.
You see, that is where I got this ring in the shape of a tortoise. It
was in the suk outside the city where I was hidden by the rebels.
The password? Oh, that has been changed many times since then. It was "Persistence." And the countersign was "Tortoise." It got me out of
there alive. That's why I bought this ring: a reminder.
Tagir Mohandis: Conversations with a Friend
Children of Dune 212
The
one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for
problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wold
within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.
The Azhar Book; Shamra I:4
Children of Dune 228
Only
in the realm of mathematics can you understand Muad'Dib's precise view
of the future. Thus: first, we postulate any number of point-dimensions
in space. (This is the classic n-fold extended aggregate of n
dimensions.) With this framework, Time as commonly understood
becomes an aggregate of one-dimensional properties. Applying this to
the Muad'Dib phenomenon, we find that reduction through the infinity
calculus) we are dealing with separate systems which contain n
body properties. For Muad'Dib, we assume the latter. As demonstrated
by the reduction, the point dimensions of the n-fold can only
have separate existence within different frameworks of Time.
Separate dimensions of Time are thus demonstrated to coexist.
This being the inescapable case, Muad'Dib's predictions required that
he perceive the n-fold not as extended aggregate but as an operation
within a single framework. In effect, he froze his universe into that
one framework which was his view of Time.
Palimbasha: Lectures at Sietch Tabr
Children of Dune 234
Because
of the one-pointed Time awareness in which the conventional mind remains
immersed, humans tend to think of everything in a sequential, word-oriented
framework. This mental trap produces very short-term concepts of effectiveness
and consequences, a condition of constant, unplanned response to crises.
Liet-Kynes
The Arrakis Workbook
Children of Dune 249
Many
forces sought control of the Atreides twins and, when the death of Leto
was announced, this movement of plot and counterplot was amplified.
Note the relative motivations: the Sisterhood feared Alia, an adult
Abomination, but still wanted those genetic characteristics carried
by the Atreides. The Church hierarchy of Auqaf and Hajj saw only the
power implicit in control of Muad'Dib's heir. CHOAM wanted a doorway
to the wealth of Dune. Farad'n and his Sardaukar sought a return to
glory for House Corrino. The Spacing Guild feared the equation Arrakis
= melange; without the spice they could not navigate. Jessica wished
to repair what her disobedience to the Bene Gesserit had created. Few
thought to ask the twins what their plans might be, until it was too
late.
The Book of Kreos
Children of Dune 265
This
rocky shrine to the skull of a ruler grants no prayers. It has become
the grave of lamentations. Only the wind hears the voice of this place.
The cries of night creatures and the passing wonder of two moons, all
say his day has ended. No more supplicants come. The visitors have gone
from the feast. How bare the pathway down this mountain.
Lines at the Shrine of an Atreides Duke Anon.
Children of Dune 299
To
know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances
will true nature be seen.
The Amtal Rule
Chapterhouse: Dune 169
Look
at one way, the universe is Brownian movement, nothing predictable at
the elemental level. Muad'dib and his Tyrant son closed the cloud chamber
where movement occurred.
Stories from Gammu
Chapterhouse: Dune 405
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