Ghosts, the old warriors said, were the price a fighting man paid to follow the path of the warrior;.
Respect is a close relative of tolerance, and both go a long way to prevent and alleviate the negative interactions between and among people. Respect was a member of each Lakota household during the free-roaming buffalo-hunting days on the northern plains.
You can think whatever you want, say whatever you want, and do whatever you want, as long as you are willing to face the consequences.
Success is rarely the result of one swell swoop, but more often the culmination of many, many small victories.
Life is a circle. The end of one journey is the beginning of the next.
When a storm blows, you must stand firm. For it is not trying to knock you down, it is really trying to teach you to be strong.
The strength of a tree, the old ones say, comes not from growing thicker in the good years when there is water, but from staying alive in the bad, dry times.
Accepting that we have weaknesses becomes a strength.
Bravery is a requisite virtue because life demands it.
What you are comes from the blood of those who set you on this journey. That is likewise unchangeable. What you see in the reflecting pool of truth is who you are. You cannot change that, so it is wise not to curse it. The wiser choice is to embrace it and make it your strength.
Humility was a virtue that the Lakota of old expected their leaders to possess. A quiet, humble person, we believed, was aware of other people and other things. An arrogant, boastful man was only aware of himself. Interestingly, our methods of selecting leaders today seem to favor the arrogant and boastful.
It is true that wealth buys power and influence, but it does not buy morality, or kindness, or compassion. The pursuit of wealth can blind us to the fact that all of us, rich or poor, can be generous with our time, love, kindness, and compassion. Those virtues, and many more, we can all have in unlimited supply.
In sharing the journey of life, travel with the humble person on the quiet path.
When an enemy throws the worst it can at us we must meet it with the best we have.
A mounted buffalo chase was one of the most exciting things a man could do. There was always the risk of injury and death, but having once hunted buffalo from the back of a horse, no man could resist trying it over and over again. It was one thing to wait in ambush along a trail for black-tailed or white-tailed deer or at a waterhole for the white-bellied pronghorn, but chasing buffalo was the pursuit of life itself, testing one’s nerves and skills to the limit as fast as a horse could run.
Rarely did anyone dream of the Thunders, and anyone who did had a special calling to be a “sacred clown,” the one who did the opposite of what was expected.
In the end, wisdom is born of weakness as well as strength.
And as the old men warned, power does not listen with honest ears to the whispers of the powerless.
There is love to overcome hate; generosity can diminish greed; truthfulness can reveal the lies in the same way the wind dries the flood and rains end the drought.
A humble person rarely stumbles, the old ones say, because such a person walks with face toward the Earth and can see the path ahead. On the other hand, the arrogant man who walks with his head high to bask in the glory of the moment will stumble often because he is more concerned with the moment than what lays ahead.