Black Elk · 270 pages
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“Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that one.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“I did not see anything [New York 1886] to help my people. I could see that the Wasichus [white man] did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation's hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“It is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“You have noticed that the truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing face is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better for them to see.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“Every little thing is sent for something, and in that thing there should be happiness and the power to make happy. Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus we should do, for this was the wish of the
Grandfathers of the World.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the west, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greenier and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“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, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“I knew that the real was yonder and that the darkened dream of it was here.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“When the ceremony was over, everybody felt a great deal better, for it had been a day of fun. They were better able now to see the greenness of the world, the wideness of the sacred day, the colors of the earth, and to set these in their minds.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“How could men get fat by being bad and starve by being good? I thought and thought about my vision, and it made me very sad.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“I could see that the Wasichus did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation’s hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth was their mother.10 This”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“Perhaps you have noticed that even in the slightest 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 different ways.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people’s heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people’s dream that died in bloody snow.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
Black Elk
Born place: Little Powder River, Wyoming, The United States
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