Meister Eckhart Quotes

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

Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.

And so, too, I speak of love: he who is held by it is held by the strongest of bonds, and yet the stress is pleasant. Moreover, he can sweetly bear all that happens to him. When one has found this bond, he looks for no other.

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

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

In this breaking-through, I receive that God and I are one. Then I am what I was, and then I neither diminish nor increase, for I am then an immovable cause that moves all things.

And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.

People who dwell in God dwell in the eternal now.

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

It is permissible to take life's blessings with both hands provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly. This applies to food and friends and kindred, to anything God gives and takes away... As long as God is satisfied do thou rest content. If he is pleased to want something else of thee, still rest content.

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

Words derive their power from the original word.

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

Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly all nature seeks God and works toward [God].

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.

Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.

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.

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.

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.

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

All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself … and let God be God in you

God does not work in all hearts alike, but according to the preparation and sensitivity He finds in each.

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

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.

Grace pours all beauty into the soul ... The soul means the world.

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

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

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.

.... all blades of grass, wood, and stone, all things are One.

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.

Between God and Me there is no 'Between'.

I tell you the truth, any object you have in your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost Truth.

God is not good, or else he could do better.

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

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

Do not cling to the symbols, but get to the inner truth!

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

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.

People should think less about what they ought to do and more about what they ought to be. If only their being were good, their works would shine forth brightly. Do not imagine that you can ground your salvation upon actions; it must rest on what you are.

Remember this: all suffering comes to an end. And whatever you suffer authentically, God has suffered from it first.

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

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

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.