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Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

Black Elk

Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
BLACK ELK

Birds Nests Religion Same
We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important.
BLACK ELK

Animal Great Heart Important Rivers Spirit
And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
BLACK ELK

Breath Country Lightning Native
The Holy Land is everywhere.
BLACK ELK

Inspirational Land Life
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.
BLACK ELK

Children Daylight Flowering Hoops Shelter
Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.
BLACK ELK

Country Honesty Inspirational Native True
You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
BLACK ELK

Anything Country Horse Native Summer Years
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
BLACK ELK

Circles Country Inspirational Native
Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth.
BLACK ELK

Circle Community Earth Live Together
Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us.
BLACK ELK

Country Dirty Legend Lying Seldom
It’s in the darkness of men’s eyes that they get lost.
BLACK ELK

Darkness Eye Lost Men
I think I have told you, but if I have not, you must have understood, that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see.
BLACK ELK

Country Men Native People Thinking
The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
BLACK ELK

Country Meaning Native Power Understanding
Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
BLACK ELK

Earth Prayer Steps
I might have been less good to the people than some man who had never dreamed at all, even with the memory of so great a vision in me.
BLACK ELK

Good Memory People Some Vision
But if the Vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet;for such things are of Spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.
BLACK ELK

Country Darkness Eye Men Native

Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

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Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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