Meister eckhart quotes

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.

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.

I tell you the truth, any object you have in your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost Truth.

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.

The more we have the less we own.

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

To the quiet mind all things are possible.

The seed of God is in us. If the seed had a good, wise and industrious cultivator, it would thrive all the more and grow up to God whose seed it is, and the fruit would be equal to the nature of God. Now the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree, and the seed of God into God.

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. However “sacred” a calling may be, as it is a calling, it has no power to sanctify.

And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.

Between God and Me there is no 'Between'.

Things are all made from nothing; hence their true source is nothing.

To be full of things is to be empty of God; to be empty of things is to be full of God.

The beast that bears you fastest to perfection is suffering.

The most powerful prayer, one wellnigh 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.

Jesus went into the temple and boldly drove out those that bought and sold. And when all was cleared, there was nobody left but Jesus. Observe this, for it is the same with us: when he is alone he is able to speak in the temple of the soul. If anyone else is speaking in the temple of your soul, Jesus will keep still, as if he were not at home. And he is not at home wherever there are strange guests-guests with whom the soul holds conversation, guests who are seeking to bargain. If Jesus is to speak and be heard, the soul must be alone and quiet.

Jesus might have said, I became man for you. If you do not become God for me, you wrong me.

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

There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.

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

Grace pours all beauty into the soul ... The soul means the world.

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.

God is equally near in all creatures.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The very best and highest attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in you.

Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.

God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk.

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

Wisdom consists in doing the next think you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.

The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity: with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.

Our best chance of finding God is to look in the place where we left him.

The seed of God is in us: Pear seeds grow into pear trees; Hazel seeds into hazel trees; And God seeds into God.

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

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

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.

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

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.

Action and becoming are one.

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

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.

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

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

Above all else, know this: Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive

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.

Everything is meant to be lost, that the soul may stand in unhampered nothingness

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.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

People who have let go of themselves are so pure that the world cannot harm them.

Love will never be anywhere except where equality and unity are..... And there can be no love where love does not find equality or is not busy creating equality. Nor is there any pleasure without equality. Practice equality in human society. Learn to love, esteem, consider all people like yourself. What happens to another, be it bad or good, pain or joy, ought to be as if it happened to you.

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.

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.

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.

It is in the darkness that one finds the light.

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

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

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.

There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence.

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.

God is intelligence occupied with knowing itself.

The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.

Remember this: all suffering comes to an end. And whatever you suffer authentically, God has suffered from it first.

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

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

The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.

I do not find God outside myself or conceive him except as my own and in me.

Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.

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.

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

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.

Existence itself stands in need of nothing, for it lacks nothing, whereas everything else needs it, because outside of it there is nothing. Nothingness stands in need of existence, as a sick man lacks health and is in need. Health has no need of a sick man. To want nothing, therefore, characterizes the highest perfection, is fullest and purest existence.

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

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

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.

The love by which we love God is the very same love with which God has first loved us.

To grasp God in all things--this is the sign of your new birth.

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

Treat all things as if they were loaned to you without any ownership - whether body or soul, sense or strength, external goods or honors, house or hall . . . everything.

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.

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.

God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.

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

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

It is not by your actions that you will be saved, but by your being.

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

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.

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

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

There exists only the present instant ... There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now.

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

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.

The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.

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

God cannot know himself without me.

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

What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.

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.

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.

Become aware of what is in you. Announce it, pronounce it, produce it, and give birth to it.

Nature's intent is neither food, nor drink, nor clothing, nor comfort, nor anything else in which God is left out. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly nature seeks, hunts, tries to ferret out the track on which God may be found.

The very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within. Therefore it is said: 'In the midst of silence the secret word was spoken to me'.

Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.

Compassion is where peace and justice kiss

Behold how all those people are merchants who shun great sins and would like to be good and do good deeds in God's honour, such as fasts, vigils, prayers, and similar good deeds of all kinds. They do all these things so that our Lord may give them something, or so that God may do something dear to them. All these people are merchants.

Nobody at any time is cut off from God.

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

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

Every creature is a word of God.

The more deeply we are our true selves, the less self is in us.

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.

God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.

Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.

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

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

What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to all. God is creating this whole universe full and entire in this present moment.

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.

...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.

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.

Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.

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.

People who dwell in God dwell in the eternal now.

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.