Meister Eckhart Quotes

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

Nothing is sharper than suffering, nothing is sweeter than to have suffered.

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

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.

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.

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.

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.

When I experience Love I must go to God. When I experience non-attachment God must come to me.

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.

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

When a man sees the one in all things, he is above mere understanding.

The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore if you want to discover nature's nakedness you must destroy its symbols, and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there you must stay.

One must learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever he may be.

I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.

You will have peace to the extent that you have God, and the further you are away from God the less you will be at peace... Thus you may measure your progress with God by measuring your peace or the lack of it.

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.

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.

Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.

Above thought is the intellect, which still seeks: it goes about looking, spies out here and there, picks up and drops. But above the intellect that seeks is another intellect which does not seek but stays in its pure, simple being, which is embraced in that light.

Every creature is a word of God.

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.

This then is salvation - when we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise their beautiful Creator.

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

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

Only he to whom God is present in everything and who employs his reason in the highest degree and has enjoyment in it knows anything of true peace and has a real kingdom of heaven.

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

To the quiet mind all things are possible.

If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. An likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence.

Become aware of what is in you. Announce it, pronounce it, produce it, and give birth to it.

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.

God is intelligence occupied with knowing itself.

God is at his greatest when I am at my least.

Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.

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

A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware of God, or he may be in Church and be aware of God; but if he is more aware of Him because he is in a quiet place, that is his own deficiency and not due to God, Who is alike present in all things and places, and is willing to give Himself everywhere so far as lies in Him... He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere.

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.

Even now one rarely hears of people achieving great things unless they first stumble in some respect.

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

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.

God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.

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.

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.

The love by which we love God is the very same love with which God has first loved us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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