Know that when you seek anything of your own, you will never find God, because you do not seek God purely. You are seeking something along with God, and you are acting just as if you were to make a candle out of God in order to look for something with it. Once one finds the things one is looking for, one throws the candle away. This is what you are doing.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God
What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Youth, Childhood
If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Soul
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God
If “thank you” is the only prayer you say, that will be enough.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Thankfulness
God wants nothing from you but the gift of a peaceful heart.
—Meister Eckhart
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: The Present, Present
The more we have the less we own.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Possessions, Property
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Truth
If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And 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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Nature
The very best and utmost of attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in thee.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Prayer, Meditation
There is no greater valor nor no sterner fight. He who would be what he ought to be must stop being what he is.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Great
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God
Conversion consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart and finding delight in doing it.
—Meister Eckhart
The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Mistakes
You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Compassion, Kindness
He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Serenity
The man of God never rejoices because he is joy itself.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God, Joy
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Identity, Self-Knowledge
To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Time, Time Management
The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity: with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.
—Meister Eckhart
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Knowledge
Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.
—Meister Eckhart
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.
—Meister Eckhart
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Love, Thankfulness, Blessings, Gratitude, Prayer, Appreciation, Life
God does not work in all hearts alike, but according to the preparation and sensitivity He finds in each.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Preparation
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Angels
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Right, Rightness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Thomas Aquinas Italian Catholic Priest
- Dante Alighieri Italian Poet, Philosopher
- Giovanni Boccaccio Italian Writer, Poet
- Roger Bacon English Philosopher
- Petrarch Italian Scholar
- William of Ockham English Philosopher, Polemicist
- Bonaventure Italian Christian Scholar
- Albert Einstein German-born Theoretical Physicist
- Erich Fromm German Social Philosopher
- Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi German Philosopher
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