Dune Messiah

Dune (1965), by Frank Herbert, is a imaginative and nuanced world of science fiction literature. It's the kind of book where if you read the first, you're likely to read the next few.

Dune Messiah, (1969), reads like a polemic on the properties of prescience and prophethood.
TO THE QUOTES!


A: Sacred! As with all things sacred, it gives with one hand and takes with the other. (p. 2)


A: Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy. (p.3)


There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. -Proverbs of Muad'dib (p. 11)


"To be ridiculous and dangerous, a questionable alliance" (p. 40)


More than one government has fallen because people discovered the real extent of official weatlth. (p. 58)


"The Mother of Chaos was born in a sea" (p. 62)


Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan (p. 67)


Truth suffers from too much analysis. -Ancient Fremen Saying (p. 99)


It is said one can always tell an aristocrat: he reveals only those of his vices which will make him popular. (p 128)


What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government? (p. 30)


Here lies a toppled god--
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and tall one.
-Tleilaxu Epigram (p. 141)


"The wise man molds himself--the fool lives only to die." (p 152)


"You do not beg the sun for mercy." -Muad'dib's Travail from The Stilgar Commentary (p. 167)

"Often, I must speak otherwise than I think. That is called diplomacy." (p. 172)


"Government cannot be religious and self-assertive at the same time. Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress." (p. 252)


Anything can be a tool--poverty, war. War is useful because it is effective in so many areas. It stimulates the metabolism. It enforces government. It diffuses genetic strains. It possesses a vitality such as nothing else in the universe. (p. 271)

Children of Dune, (1976), is turning out better so far. It's got... plot.