dune quotes

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression
to develop psychic muscles.

-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

The hands move, the lips move --
Ideas gush from his words,
And his eyes devour!
He is an island of Selfdom.

-description from "A Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This
power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the
orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community
inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete
opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing
themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.

-from "Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues" by the Princess Irulan

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife--chopping off what's incomplete and
saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended here."

-from "Collected Sayings of, Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in
part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences
greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is
projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is
what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that
permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional
greatness will destroy a man.

-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry,
elegance, and grace -- those qualities you find always in that which the true
artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand
trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the
pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our
society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is
possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that
the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things
move toward death.

-from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the
seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin
goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth
endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the
place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and
resourcefulness."

-from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan

There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides died a meteor
streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan.

-the Princess Irulan: "Introduction to A Child's History of Muad'Dib"

Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of
Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the
others, we can say that 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. Muad'Dib knew that every
experience carries its lesson.

-from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel
poised to spin.

-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan

Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.

-Dirge for Jamis on the Funeral Plain, from "Songs of Muad'Dib" by the Princess
Irulan

"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in
which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."

-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

And Muad'Dib stood before them, and he said: "Though we deem the captive dead,
yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she
sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the
unknowable does she see because of me."

-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan

My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in
the ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led me down the Hall
of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked the strong
resemblance between them--my father and this man in the portrait--both with
thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by cold eyes.
"Princess-daughter," my father said, "I would that you'd been older when it
came time for this man to choose a woman." My father was 71 at the time and
looking no older than the man in the portrait, and I was but 14, yet I remember
deducing in that instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his
son, and disliked the political necessities that made them enemies.

-"In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan

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

-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

My father, the Padishah Emperor, was 72 yet looked no more than 35 the year he
encompassed the death of Duke Leto and gave Arrakis back to the Harkonnens. He
seldom appeared in public wearing other than a Sardaukar uniform and a Burseg's
black helmet with the imperial lion in gold upon its crest. The uniform was an
open reminder of where his power lay. He was not always that blatant, though.
When he wanted, he could radiate charm and sincerity, but I often wonder in
these later days if anything about him was as it seemed. I think now he was a
man fighting constantly to escape the bars of an invisible cage. 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.

-"In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan

"Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest." Thus the
Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must
rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and
who are the ruled?"

-Muad'Dib's Secret Message to the Landsraad from "Arrakis Awakening" by the
Princess Irulan

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

-from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he
walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had
lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its
intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son
might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily
hoodwinked.

-from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan

What had the Lady Jessica to sustain her in her time of trial? Think you
carefully on this Bene Gesserit proverb and perhaps you will see: "Any road
followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just
a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you
cannot see the mountain."

-from "Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan