Dune

Isn’t it odd how we misunderstand the hidden unity of kindness and cruelty

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.

There should be a word-tension directly opposite to adab, the demanding memory, she thought. There should be a word for memories that deny themselves.

I’m like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness—until one day the ability to feel is forced into them.

The thought hung in her mind, an enclosing awareness.

And I say: “Look! I have no hands!” But the people all around me say: “What are hands?”

When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place.”

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.”

What was it St. Augustine said? she asked herself. “The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”

Dune could be read on any of several layers that were nested beneath the adventure story of a messiah on a desert planet. Ecology is the most obvious layer, but alongside that are politics, religion, philosophy, history, human evolution, and even poetry. Dune is a marvelous tapestry of words, sounds, and images.

The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever,”

How can you tell what’s ruthless unless you’ve plumbed the depths of both cruelty and kindness?