Top 248 Quotes & Sayings by Meister Eckhart - Page 3

God is at home. We are in the far country.

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.

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.

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

I am what I wanted and I want what I am.

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.

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.

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.

There is in the soul a something in which God dwells, and there is in the soul a something in which the soul dwells in God.

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.

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

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

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

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

To get at the core of God at his greatest, one must first get to the core of himself at his least, for no one can know God who has not first known himself. This core is a simple stillness, which is unmoved itself but by whose immobility all things are moved and all receive life.

Philosophers say the Soul is double-faced, her upper face gazes at God all the time and her lower face looks somewhat down, informing the senses; and the upper face, which is the summit of the soul, is in eternity and has nothing to do with time: it knows nothing of time or of body.

Do not think that saintliness comes from occupation; it depends rather on what one is. The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy.

Nothing is sharper than suffering, nothing is sweeter than to have suffered.

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.

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

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

Let God work in you, give the work to God, and have peace. Don't worry if He works through your nature or above your nature, because both are His, nature and grace.

There are plenty to follow our Lord half-way, but not the other half. They will give up possessions, friends and honors, but it touches them to closely to disown themselves.

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

God is greater than God.

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

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

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.

Whoever has God truly as a companion, is with him in all places, both on the streets, and among people, as well as in church, or in the desert or in a monastic cell...Why is this so? It is so because such a person possesses God alone, keeping their gaze fixed upon God, and thus all things become God for him or her. Such people be a God in all their deeds and in all the places they go, and it is God alone who is the author of all their deeds.

Once a man came to me - it was not too long ago - and said that he had given away much landed property and many goods for his own sake so that he might save his soul. Then I thought: 'How little and how insignificant is what you have let go of! It is blindness and foolishness for you to continue looking at all you've let go of. If, however, you've let go of yourself, then you've really let go.'

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.

A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or worship and which does not seek its own interest in anything but is always immersed in God's most precious will. . . . There is no work which men and women can perform, however small, which does not draw from this its power and strength.

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.

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

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.

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.

God must act and pour himself into you the moment he finds you ready. Don't imagine that God can be compared to an earthly carpenter, who acts or doesn't act, as he wishes; who can will to do something or leave it undone, according to his pleasure. It is not that way with God: 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.

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.

This much is certain: when a man is happy, happy to the core and root of beatitude, he is no longer conscious of himself or anything else.

What good is it that Christ was born [2,000] years ago if he is not born now in your heart?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The soul loves the body. And consider too how it is that the body is more in the soul than the soul is in the body.

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.

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.

God is nearer to me than I am to myself; He is just as near to wood and stone, but they do not know it.

For a heart to be perfectly ready it has to be perfectly empty. In this condition it has attained its maximum capacity.

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

Therefore, look only for this fishhook, and you will be happily caught. The more you are caught, the more you will be liberated.

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

My Lord told me a joke. And seeing Him laugh has done more for me than any scripture I will ever read.

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.

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

The greatest power available to man is not to use it.

The now wherein God made the world is as near this time as the now I am speaking in this moment, and the last day is as near this now as was yesterday.