39 Meister Eckhart Quotes

Meister Eckhart quotes

1. When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. ... When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. Not for nothing did God give the keys into St. Peter's keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is.

2. 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. 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.

3. If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'Thank You', that would suffice.

4. Only those who have dared to let go can dare to reenter.

5. We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.

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

7. We need not destroy any little good in ourselves for the sake of a better, but we should strive to grasp every truth in its highest meaning, for no one good contradicts another.

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

9. 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

10. A question arises regarding the angels who dwell with us, serve us and protect us, whether their joys are equal to those of the angels in heaven, or whether they are diminished by the fact that they protect and serve us. No, they are certainly not; for the work of the angels is the will of God, and the will of God is the work of the angels; their service to us does not hinder their joy nor their working. If God told an angel to go to a tree and pluck caterpillars off it, the angel would be quite ready to do so, and it would be his happiness, if it were the will of God.

11. The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills. If he were ill he would not wish to be well. If he really abides in God's will, all pain is to him a joy, all complication, simple: yea, even the pains of hell would be a joy to him. He is free and gone out from himself, and from all that he receives, he must be free. If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour. The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.

12. 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.

13. The quieter the mind the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is.

1. 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.

2. When I think of God's Kingdom, I am compelled to be silent because of its immensity, because God's Kingdom is none other than God himself with all His riches.

3. Action and becoming are one.

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

5. [W]e must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge.

6. I need to be silent for awhile, worlds are forming in my heart.

7. 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.

8. 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.

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

10. Our bodily food is changed into us, but our spiritual food changes us into it.

11. 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.

12. Be ready at all times for the gifts of God, and always for new ones.

13. If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really 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.

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

15. To be sure, our mental processes often go wrong, so that we imagine God to have gone away. What should be done then? Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure. Learn to behave thus even in deepest distress and keep yourself that way in any and every estate of life. I can give you no better advice than to find God where you lost him.

16. The first measn by which He draws is affinity, that affinity which brings creatures of the same species together, and like to its like. With this cord of affinity He drew men to the Godhead, Whom He always resembles. In order that God may draw more to Himself, and forget His wrath.

17. 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.

18. God is bound to act, to pour himself out (into thee) as soon as ever he shall find thee ready.

19. Think more about who you are and less about what you do, for if you are just, your ways will be just.

20. 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.

21. 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.

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

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

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

25. The beast that bears you fastest to perfection is suffering.

26. 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.