Meister Eckhart Quotations

Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.

Words derive their power from the original word.

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.

When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order

Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.

A just person is one who is conformed and transformed into justice.

To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.

God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk.

Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door.

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.

The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.

One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God.

If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.

The more we have the less we own.

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.

No-one knows what the soul is.. But what we do know is, the soul is where God works compassion.

God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk.

Whoever possesses God in their being, has him in a divine manner, and he shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see.

To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.

There is no stopping place in this life -- nor is there ever one for any man, no matter how far along his way he's gone.

You must learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever you may be. You must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed in your mind.

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough.

Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.

Let God operate in thee; Hand the work over to Him and do not disquiet thyself as to whether or no He is working with nature or above nature, for His are both nature and grace.

Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this. Others say they would be better off in church. If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are. Your surroundings don't matter. God is with you everywhere -- in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you. God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be.

For then I knew my soul - every soul - has always held Him.

I will be silent and will hear what God will say in me...If God wishes to speak to me, let him enter. I will not go out.

There is no greater valor nor no sterner fight. He who would be what he ought to be must stop being what he is.

Behold how all those people are merchants who shun great sins and would like to be good and do good deeds in God's honour, such as fasts, vigils, prayers, and similar good deeds of all kinds. They do all these things so that our Lord may give them something, or so that God may do something dear to them. All these people are merchants.

If the seal is pressed completely through the wax so that no wax remains without being impressed by the seal, then it becomes indistinguishably one with the seal. Similarly the soul becomes completely united with God.

This is not only a commandment but also a promise or reward.

I maintain that all sorrow comes from love of those things of which loss deprives me.

A life of rest and peace in God is good; a life of pain lived in patience is still better; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.

Where intuition finds, love follows, and memory and all the soul as well.

No man was ever lost except for one reason: having once left his ground he has let himself become too permanently settled abroad.

The less you feel and the more firmly you believe, the more praiseworthy is your faith and the more it will be esteemed and appreciated; for real faith is much more than a mere opinion of man. In it we have true knowledge: in truth, we lack nothing save true faith....

I have sought earnestly and with great diligence that good and high virtue by which man may draw closest to God... and as far as my intelligence would permit, I find that high virtue to be pure disinterest, that is, detachment from creatures. Our Lord said to Martha 'Unum est necessarium', which is to say; to be untroubled and pure, one thing is necessary and that is disinterest.

I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!

Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.

When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure.

The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived.

To get at the core of God at his greatest, one must first get to the core of himself at his least, for no one can know God who has not first known himself. This core is a simple stillness, which is unmoved itself but by whose immobility all things are moved and all receive life.

All that the Eternal Father teaches and reveals is His being, His nature, and His Godhead , which He manifests to us in His Son, and teaches us that we are also His Son.

Now rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, that you are so united with God that no one may separate you from Him. I cannot fully praise nor love Him therefore must I die, and cast myself into the divine void, till I rise from non-existence to existence.

The moral task of man is a process of spiritualization. All creatures are go-betweens, and we are placed in time that by diligence in spiritual business we may grow liker and nearer to God. The aim of man is beyond the temporal in the serene region of the everlasting Present.

Through the higher love the whole life of man is to be elevated from temporal selfishness to the spring of all love, to God: man will again be master over nature by abiding in God and lifting her up to God.

Think more about who you are and less about what you do, for if you are just, your ways will be just.

That's all an angel is....an idea of God.

The soul at its highest is found like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God.

Outward as well as inward morality helps to form the idea of a true Christian freedom. We are right to lay stress on inwardness, but in this world there is no inwardness without an outward expression.

Action and becoming are one.

Everything is full and pure at its source and precisely there, not outside.

Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time: and not only time but temporalities, not only temporal things but temporal affections, not only temporal affections but the very taint and smell of time.

Though one should live through all the time from Adam and all the time to come before the judgment day doing good works, yet he who, energising in his highest, purest part, crosses from time to eternity, verily in the sight of God this man conceives and does far more than anyone who lives throughout all past and future time, because this now includes the whole of time. One master says that in crossing over time into the now each power of the soul will surpass itself. . . .

Saint Augustine cries, Lord I cannot love you, but come in and love yourself in me. According to Saint Paul, we must put off our own natural form and put on the form of God, and Saint Augustine tells us to discard our own mode of nature; then the divine nature will flow in and be revealed. Saint Augustine says, Those who seek and find, find not. He who seeks and finds not, he alone finds. Saint Paul says, What I was, was not I, it was God in me.

To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God I everything we do, and whatever the job or place, keep on with him, letting nothing stand in our way.

People who have let go of themselves are so pure that the world cannot harm them.

The Father and the Son have one Will, and that Will is the Holy Ghost, Who gives Himself to the soul so that the Divine Nature permeates the powers of the soul so that it can only do God-like works.

Love will never be anywhere except where equality and unity are..... And there can be no love where love does not find equality or is not busy creating equality. Nor is there any pleasure without equality. Practice equality in human society. Learn to love, esteem, consider all people like yourself. What happens to another, be it bad or good, pain or joy, ought to be as if it happened to you.

My children, mark me. I pray you. Know! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his loving me, whether he would or no. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood; for God is love no less than he is truth; as he is good, so is he love as well. It is the absolute truth, as God lives... If anyone would ask me what God is, I should answer: God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all with one accord essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow.

To walk on not wondering am I right or doing something wrong.

God must act and pour himself into you the moment he finds you ready. Don't imagine that God can be compared to an earthly carpenter, who acts or doesn't act, as he wishes; who can will to do something or leave it undone, according to his pleasure. It is not that way with God: where and when God finds you ready, he must act and overflow into you, just as when the air is clear and pure, the sun must overflow into it and cannot refrain from doing that.

By humility, out of an enemy He has made a friend, which is more than to have created a new earth.

When I think of God's Kingdom, I am compelled to be silent because of its immensity, because God's Kingdom is none other than God himself with all His riches.

The first measn by which He draws is affinity, that affinity which brings creatures of the same species together, and like to its like. With this cord of affinity He drew men to the Godhead, Whom He always resembles. In order that God may draw more to Himself, and forget His wrath.

The second means of attraction which He used is Emptiness, as we see when we place one end of a hollow pipe in water, and draw up it by suction; the water runs up the stem to the mouth, because the emptiness of the pipe, from which the air has been drawn, draws the water to itself.

The human spirit must transcend number and break through multiplicity, and God will break through him; and just as He

Though it may be called a nescience, and unknowing, yet there is in it more than all knowing and understanding without it; for this unknowing lures and attracts you from all understood things, and from yourself as well.

Even stones have a love, a love that seeks the ground.

This much is certain: when a man is happy, happy to the core and root of beatitude, he is no longer conscious of himself or anything else.

The beast that bears you fastest to perfection is suffering.

No one is forgotten. It is a lie, any talk of God that does not comfort you.

God is in all things, but so far as God is Divine and so far as He is rational, God is nowhere so properly as in the soul - in the innermost of the soul

A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or worship and which does not seek its own interest in anything but is always immersed in God's most precious will. . . . There is no work which men and women can perform, however small, which does not draw from this its power and strength.

Philosophers say the Soul is double-faced, her upper face gazes at God all the time and her lower face looks somewhat down, informing the senses; and the upper face, which is the summit of the soul, is in eternity and has nothing to do with time: it knows nothing of time or of body.

I have often said that a person who wishes to begin a good life should be like one who draws a circle. Let him or her get the center in the right place and keep it so and the circumference will be good.

The seed of God is in us. If the seed had a good, wise and industrious cultivator, it would thrive all the more and grow up to God whose seed it is, and the fruit would be equal to the nature of God. Now the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree, and the seed of God into God.

He who can make distinction in God without number or quantity, knows that the three persons of the Trinity are one God.

I am what I wanted and I want what I am.

To be properly expressed a thing must proceed from within, moved by its form: it must come, not in from without but out from within.

The soul loves the body. And consider too how it is that the body is more in the soul than the soul is in the body.

Love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell. Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul.

What our Lord did was done with the intent, and this alone, that he might be with us and we with him.

God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.

You need seek God neither below or above.He is no farther away than the door of the heart.

God is nearer to me than I am to myself; He is just as near to wood and stone, but they do not know it.

Love God, and do as you like, say the Free Spirits. Yes; but as long as you like anything contrary to God's will, you do not love Him.