Meister Eckhart Quotes
1. If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.
2. 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.
3. Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
4. And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
5. Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
6. 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.
7. Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.
8. Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.
9. If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.
10. Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.
11. Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.
12. 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.
13. When the Soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.
14. 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.
15. Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow – for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage.
16. The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.
17. We are all meant to be mothers of God…for God is always needing to be born.
18. 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.
19. One must learn an inner solitude, wherever one may be.
20. One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works.
21. My Lord told me a joke. And seeing Him laugh has done more for me than any scripture I will ever read.
22. I am what I wanted and I want what I am.
23. There’s a place in the soul where you’ve never been wounded.
24. If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.
25. God is not good, or else he could do better.
26. All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
27. Nobody at any time is cut off from God.
28. Run into peace.
29. I need to be silent for a while, worlds are forming in my heart.
30. If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: ‘Why are you living?’ life, if it could answer, would only say, ‘I live so that I may live.’ That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living.
31. God is at home. We are in the far country.
32. Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.
33. For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again.
34. I tell you the truth, any object you have in your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost Truth.
35. The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.
36. The more we have the less we own.
37. Every creature is a word of God.
38. 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.
39. If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” it will be enough.
40. As long as I am this or that, I am not all things.
41. [W]e must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge.
42. Even now one rarely hears of people achieving great things unless they first stumble in some respect.
43. 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.
44. 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.
45. We rarely find people who achieve great things without first going astray.
46. 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.
47. I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!
48. The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.
49. Isness is God.
50. God is greater than God.
51. People should not worry so 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 sanctified our works.
52. 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.
53. Every creature is a word of God and is a book about God.
54. Where there is Isness, there God is. Creation is the giving of isness from God. And that is why God becomes where any creature expresses God.
55. The less theorizing you do about God, the more receptive you are to His inpouring.
56. But where is this true possession of God, whereby we really possess him, to be found? This real possession of God is to be found in the heart, in an inner motion of the spirit towards him and striving for him, and not just in thinking about him always and in the same way. For that would be beyond the capacity of our nature and would be very difficult to achieve and would not even be the best thing to do. We should not content ourselves with the God of thoughts for, when the thoughts come to an end, so too shall God. Rather, we should have a living God who is beyond the thoughts of all people and all creatures. That kind of God will not leave us, unless we ourselves choose to turn away from him.
57. But of God you can never have a sufficiency. The more you have of God, the more you desire. If you could ever have enough of God, so that you were content with him, then God would not be God.
58. There is no need to look for God here or there. He is no farther away than the door of your own heart.
59. God, who is faithful, allows his friends to fall frequently into weakness only in order to remove from them any prop on which they might lean. For a loving person it would be a great joy to be able to achieve many great feats, whether keeping vigils, fasting, performing other ascetical practices or doing major, difficult and unusual works. For them this is a great joy, support and source of hope so that their works become a product and a support upon which they can lean. But it is precisely this which our Lord wishes to take from them so that he alone will be their help and support . . . in no way do our works serve to make God give us anything or do anything for us. Our Lord wishes his friends to be freed from such an attitude, and thus he removes their support from them so that they must henceforth find their support only in him.
60. When God laughs at the soul and the soul laughs back at God, the persons of the Trinity are begotten. When the Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs back at the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love, and that love is the Holy Spirit.
