Meister Eckhart Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.

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

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.

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....

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.

The most important hour is always the present. The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now. The most necessary work is always love.

The very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within. Therefore it is said: 'In the midst of silence the secret word was spoken to me'.

People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are.

Above all else, know this: Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive

If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than yourself, you will not succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man. Thus he is the great righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally.

Whoever has God truly as a companion, is with him in all places, both on the streets, and among people, as well as in church, or in the desert or in a monastic cell...Why is this so? It is so because such a person possesses God alone, keeping their gaze fixed upon God, and thus all things become God for him or her. Such people be a God in all their deeds and in all the places they go, and it is God alone who is the author of all their deeds...

For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again.

To the quiet mind all things are possible.

The most powerful prayer, one well-nigh omnipotent, and the worthiest work of all is the outcome of a quiet mind. The quieter it is the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is. To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead to its own.

If we keep our eyes fixed on God alone, then truly he must work in us and nothing, neither the crowd nor any place can hinder him in this.

There exists only the present instant ... There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now ...

People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works.

There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.

Nothing will be able to hinder us, if we desire and seek God alone, and take pleasure in nothing else.

What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to all. God is creating this whole universe full and entire in this present moment.

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.

Every creature is a word of God.

The soul will bring forth Person if God laughs into her and she laughs back to him. To speak in parable, the Father laughs into the Son and the Son laughs back to the Father; and this laughter breeds liking and liking breeds joy, and joy begets love, and love begets Person, and Person begets the Holy Ghost.

The more deeply we are our true selves, the less self is in us.

The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.

What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.

God holds each of us by a string. When we sin, we cut the string. But God ties it up again, making a knot. Each time our wrongdoing cuts the string, God ties another knot drawing us up closer to Him.

People who dwell in God dwell in the eternal now.

If we seek God for our own good and profit, we are not seeking God.

The now wherein God made the world is as near this time as the now I am speaking in this moment, and the last day is as near this now as was yesterday.

When someone goes out of himself to find God or fetch God, he is wrong.

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

I do not find God outside myself or conceive him except as my own and in me.

Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.

God is greater than God.

If I say that God is good, that is not true. God is not good. I am good, and if I say that God is wise, that is not true. I am wiser than he is.

Compassion is where peace and justice kiss

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

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

God is at home. We are in the far country.

God wants nothing from you but the gift of a peaceful heart.

The very best and highest attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in you.

The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they're not punishing you, they're freeing your soul. If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.

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.

Our best chance of finding God is to look in the place where we left him.

To seek God by rituals is to get the ritual and lose God in the process