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 ELKIt is not enough to have a vision. In order to have its power, you must enact your vision on earth for all to see. Only then do you have the power.
More Black Elk Quotes
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The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.
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The visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds.
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I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.
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The Holy Land is everywhere.
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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.
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It’s in the darkness of men’s eyes that they get lost.
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The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
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Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways.
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When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.
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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.
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Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
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Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.
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Know the Power that is Peace.
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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.
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And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
BLACK ELK






