Better Than the Litany Against Fear

Frank Herbert's Best Prose

[professorerudite]

Spoilers for Chapterhouse: Dune

[dune-quotes]

[dune-quotes]

Rainbow Glitter Kitty

Music to dance, cry, love, and die to.

Well internet friends, that’s all the quotes that struck me as insightful on my last read through. Hopefully we’ll all still be around the next time I take a turn riding the worm and can start adding some more. Thanks to everyone who stuck with me, especially during the two years where I seemingly forgot about my quote collection. If you’d like some content that wasn’t just me stealing what Frank wrote, you can check out some things I wrote. It’s a music project that is pretty heavy on sci fi subject matter. If you’d take a listen I would be much appreciative, and if you enjoy it enough to share it with folks, I’d owe you some serious affection.

May your knife never chip or shatter, DQ

[dune-quotes]

The thrust of that thought might have dulled a lesser intellect. But Odrade needed no Litany Against Fear to remain clearheaded. She had a simpler formula. Face your fears or they will climb over your back.

Chapterhouse: Dune

[dune-quotes]

No pity could be spared for those who never showed it to others.

Chapterhouse: Dune

[dune-quotes]

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto), Chapterhouse: Dune

[dune-quotes]

"Educational bureaucracies dull the child's questing sensitivity." Odrade explaining. "The young must be damped down. Never let them know how good they can be. That brings change. Spend lots of committee time talking about how to deal with exceptional students. Don't spend any time dealing with how the conventional teacher feels threatened by emerging talents and squelches them because of a deep-seated desire to feel superior and safe in a safe environment."

Chapterhouse: Dune

[dune-quotes]

He had told the rebels no ultimate truths (if such existed); only enough to lure them back into the fold. Pain and its predictable consequences. "This is for your own good."

Heretics of Dune

[dune-quotes]

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions of history have based their job security.

Bene Gesserit Coda, Chapterhouse: Dune

[dune-quotes]

<1 <2 <3

[dune-quotes]

A major concept guides the Missionaria Protectiva: Purposeful instruction of the masses. This is firmly seated in our belief that the aim of argument should be to change the nature of truth. In such matters, we prefer the use of power rather than force.

Bene Gesserit Coda, Chapterhouse: Dune

[dune-quotes]

You could drag humankind almost anywhere by manipulating the enormous energies of procreation. You could goad humans into action they would never have believed possible. One of his teachers had said it directly: "This energy must have an outlet. Bottle it up and it becomes monstrously dangerous. Redirect it and it will sweep over anything in its path. This is an ultimate secret of all religions."

Heretics of Dune

[dune-quotes]

We will worship you, God, but don't bother us. This is our religion, our city. You see, we no longer call this place Arrakeen. Now, it's Keen. The planet no longer is Dune or Arrakis. Now, it's Rakis. Keep your distance, God. You are the past and the past is an embarrassment.

Heretics of Dune

[dune-quotes]

In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use it's proper name: Temporary.

Leto Atreides II, The Stolen Journals, God Emperor of Dune

[dune-quotes]

All organized religions face a common problem, a tender spot through which we may enter and shift them to our designs: How do they distinguish hubris from revelation?

Missionaria Protectiva, the Inner Teachings, Heretics of Dune

[dune-quotes]

From the most ancient times, the knowledgeable had preferred to surround themselves with fine woods rather than with mass-produced artificial materials known then as polastine, polaz, and pormbat latterly: tine, laz, and bat.) As far back as the Old Empire there had been a pejorative label for the small rich and Families Minor arising from the knowledge of a rare wood's value. "He's a three P-O," they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from declasse substances. Even when the supremely rich were forced to employ one of the distressful three P-Os, they disguised it where possible behind O-P (the only P) pilingitam.

Heretics of Dune

[dune-quotes]

“At the portal, one Fish Speaker guard whispered to another: “Is God troubled?” And her companion replied: “The sins of this universe would trouble anyone.” Leto heard them and wept silently.”

— God Emperor of Dune

[professorerudite]

I’m dying 😂, although not as fast as Leto as “he saw the scimitar arc of the river, a sliver-edged thing which shimmered in its mottled shadows, a vicious blade of a river honed through Eternity and ready now to receive him into its agony.

I cannot cry, nor even shout, he thought. Tears are no longer possible. They’re water. I’ll have water enough in a moment. I can only moan in my grief. I am alone, more alone than ever before” (GE 414).

And then he proceeds to pontificate for several pages until he finally dissolves. (Siona’s all “I wish he’d hurry up and die!” 😂)

Don’t worry, Leto. I love you, Emo Worm Man. 💔

[dune-quotes]

Dr. E never disappoints.