Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
BLACK ELKThe boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.
More Black Elk Quotes
-
-
The life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
BLACK ELK -
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 -
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round.
BLACK ELK -
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 -
But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.
BLACK ELK -
So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation’s hoop I thrust it in the earth.
BLACK ELK -
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other.
BLACK ELK -
I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.
BLACK ELK -
The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
BLACK ELK -
And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
BLACK ELK -
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 -
I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World.
BLACK ELK -
The life of an Indian is like the wings of the air. That is why you notice the hawk knows how to get his prey. The Indian is like that.
BLACK ELK -
The Holy Land is everywhere.
BLACK ELK -
Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
BLACK ELK







