Meister Eckhart Soul Quotations

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Every creature is a word of God.

The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.

Everything is meant to be lost, that the soul may stand in unhampered nothingness

God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.

Jesus went into the temple and boldly drove out those that bought and sold. And when all was cleared, there was nobody left but Jesus. Observe this, for it is the same with us: when he is alone he is able to speak in the temple of the soul. If anyone else is speaking in the temple of your soul, Jesus will keep still, as if he were not at home. And he is not at home wherever there are strange guests-guests with whom the soul holds conversation, guests who are seeking to bargain. If Jesus is to speak and be heard, the soul must be alone and quiet.

The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity: with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.

Treat all things as if they were loaned to you without any ownership - whether body or soul, sense or strength, external goods or honors, house or hall . . . everything.

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God's love; but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.

There is in the soul a something in which God dwells, and there is in the soul a something in which the soul dwells in God.

When the Soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.

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

There is something in the soul that is so akin to God that it is one with Him... It has nothing in common with anything created.

I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely. I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.