Meister Eckhart Quotes

As long as I am this or that, I am not all things.

Whoever wants to receive the body of our Lord does not need to scrutinize what they are feeling at the time or how great their piety or devotion is, but rather they should note the state of their will and attitude of mind. You should not place too much weight on your feelings but emphasize rather the object of your love and striving.

If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.

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

In Islam, and especially among the Sufi Orders, siyahat or 'errance' - the action or rhythm of walking - was used as a technique for dissolving the attachments of the world and allowing men to lose themselves in God. The aim of a dervish was to become a 'dead man walking': one whose body stays alive on the earth yet whose soul is already in Heaven. A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, toward the end of his tourney, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will...it was quite similar to an Aboriginal concept, 'Many men afterwards become country, in that place, Ancestors.' By spending his whole life walking and singing his Ancestor's Songline, a man eventually became the track, the Ancestor and the song. The Wayless Way, where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves.

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

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.

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.

When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order.

God is intelligence occupied with knowing itself.

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

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.

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

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.

Whatever thou sayest of God is untrue.

There is no greater valor nor no sterner fight. He who would be what he ought to be must stop being what he is.

God is equally near in all creatures.

You need seek God neither below or above.He is no farther away than the door of the heart.

A man should orient his will and all his works to God and having only God in view go forward unafraid, not thinking, am I right or am I wrong? One who worked out all the chances before starting his first fight would never fight at all. And if, going to someplace, we must think how to set the front foot down, we shall never get there. It is our duty to do the next thing: go straight on, that is the right way.

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.

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.

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.

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.

It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else.

God is greater than God.

You should give your all to God, and then worry no more about what he may do with what is his.

The less theorizing you do about God, the more receptive you are to His inpouring.

Nobody at any time is cut off from God.

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.

Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.

Your own efforts "did not bring it to pass," only God-but rejoice if God found a use for your efforts in His work.

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

Where and when God finds you ready, he must act and overflow into you, just as when the air is clear and pure, the sun must overflow into it and cannot refrain from doing that.

When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure.

Obedience need never be anxious, for there is no form of goodness which it does not possess in itself. When we go out of ourselves through obedience and strip ourselves of what is ours, then God must enter into us; for when someone wills nothing for themselves, then God must will on their behalf just as he does for himself. Whenever I have taken leave of my own will, putting it in the hands of my superior , and no longer will anything for myself, then God must will on my behalf, and if he neglects me in this respect, then he neglects himself. And so in all things in which I do not will for myself, God wills on my behalf.

That which a man acquires by contemplation he should spend in love.

As long as I am this or that, or have this or that, I am not all things and I have not all things. Become pure till you neither are nor have either this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things.

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.

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.

How can we be directly in God, neither striving nor seeking for anything other than him, and how can we be so poor and give up everything? It is hard counsel that we should not desire any reward. Now be certain of this: God never ceases to give us everything. Even if he had sworn not to, he still could not help giving us things. It is far more important to him to give than it is for us to receive, but we should not focus upon this, for the less we strive for it, the more God will give us. God intends thereby only that we should become yet more rich and be all the more capable of receiving things from him.

I maintain that all sorrow comes from love of those things of which loss deprives me.

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

The most important hour is always the present.
The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now.
The most necessary work is always love.

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God's love; but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.

Now, you might say: how can this be? I cannot feel his presence in any way. Listen to this. Sensing his presence is not in your power but in his. He will show himself when it suits him to do so, and he can also remain hidden if that is his wish. This is what Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus: 'The spirit breathes where it will: you hear its voice but do not know where it comes from, or where it is going' (John 3:8).

We are all meant to be mothers of God ... for God is always needing to be born.

The moral task of man is a process of spiritualization. All creatures are go-betweens, and we are placed in time that by diligence in spiritual business we may grow liker and nearer to God. The aim of man is beyond the temporal in the serene region of the everlasting Present.

Every creature is a word of God.

Every creature is a word of God and is a book about God.

For whoever does not truly have God within themselves, but must constantly receive him in one external thing after another, seeking God in diverse ways, whether by particular works, people or places, such a person does not possess God. The least thing can impede them, for they do not have God and do not seek, love and intend him alone. It is not only bad company but also good company that can obstruct them, not only the street but also the church, not only evil words and deeds but also good words and deeds, for the obstruction lies within themselves, since in them God has not become all things.

A life of rest and peace in God is good; a life of pain lived in patience is still better; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.

He is conscious only of God ... To be conscious of knowing God is to know about God and self.

But if God endures it for the sake of the benefit for you which he has foreseen in it, and if you are willing to suffer what he suffers and what passes through him to you, then it takes on the colour of God, and shame becomes honour, bitterness is sweetness and the deepest darkness becomes the clearest light. Then everything takes its flavour from God and becomes divine, for everything conforms itself to God, whatever befalls us, if we intend only him and nothing else is pleasing to us. Thus we shall grasp God in all bitterness as well as in the greatest sweetness.

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

We ought not to have or let ourselves be satisfied with any thought of God. When the thought goes, our God goes with it. No, what we want is a real (subsistent) God who far transcends the thoughts of men and creatures. This God does not disappear unless we turn our back on him of our own accord. He who has God thus, in reality, has gotten God divinely; to him God is apparent in all things. Everything smacks to him of God; everywhere God's image stares him in the face. God is gleaming in him all the time. In him there is riddance and return; the vision of his God is ever present to his mind.

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

Only those who have dared to let go can dare to re-enter.

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

There is no need to look for God here or there. He is no farther away than the door of your own heart.

Only those to whom God is present in everything and who employ their reason in the highest degree and have true enjoyment in it know anything of true peace and have a real kingdom of heaven.

The more we have the less we own.

The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth.

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.

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

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

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

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

The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments.
They burn them all away, but they're not punishing you, they're freeing your soul.
If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away.
If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.

The man who has submitted his will and purposes entirely to God, carries God with him in all his works and in all circumstances.

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.

Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God.

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

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.

Now rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, that you are so united with God that no one may separate you from Him. I cannot fully praise nor love Him therefore must I die, and cast myself into the divine void, till I rise from non-existence to existence.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

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.

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.

When the Soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.

This is my only and permanent complaint, that vulgar people, empty of the Spirit of God, want to judge solely by their human thinking what they listen to or read in the Bible, which has been pronounced and written by the Holy Spirit and in the Holy Spirit.

To the extent that you eliminate ego from your activities, God comes into them - but no more and no less. Begin with that, and let it cost you your uttermost. In this way, and no other, is true peace to be found.

There is no better advice on how to find God than to seek him where we left him: do now, when you cannot find God, what you did when last you had him, and then you will find him again.

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

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

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

He who can make distinction in God without number or quantity, knows that the three persons of the Trinity are one God.

Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.

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.

You should observe, and have observed, in which direction God urges you most of all to go, for, as St. Paul says, not all people are called to follow the same path to God. If you find then that the shortest way for you does not lie in many outward works, great endurance and privation (which things are in any case of little importance unless we are particularly called to them by God or unless we have sufficient strength to perform them without disrupting our inner life), if you do not find these things right for you, then be at peace and have little to do with them.


But then you might say: if they are not important, why did our forebears, including many saints, do these things? Consider this: if our Lord gave them this particular kind of devotional practice, then he also gave them the strength to carry it through, and it was this which pleased him and which was their greatest achievement. For God has not linked our salvation with any particular kind of devotion . . . Not everyone can follow the same way, nor can all people follow only one way, nor can we follow all the different ways or everyone else's way . . . It is the same with following the severe life-style of such saints. You should love their way and find it appealing, even though you do not have to follow their example.

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.

For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again.

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.

God is the word that speaks itself.

Furthermore, we should keep all things only as if they had been merely lent and not given to us, without any sense of possessiveness, whether it be our body or soul, our senses, faculties, worldly goods or honour, friends, relations, house or home or anything whatsoever.

We rarely find people who achieve great things without first going astray.

Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.

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

As God can only be seen by His own light, so He can only be loved by His own love.

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.

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

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.