Meister Eckhart famous quotes

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

#Inspirational #Life #Thanksgiving

Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Life

Every creature is a word of God.
-- Meister Eckhart

#God #Word Of God #Creatures

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Lying #Creating #Long

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#God #Disappointment #Eye

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Cutting #Knowing Who You Are #Drawing

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

#Heart #Preparation #Doe

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

#God #Looks #Chance

It is in the darkness that one finds the light.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Grief #Light #Darkness

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Good Morning #Addiction #Acting

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

#Excellence #Soil #Action

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

#Heart #Garden #Peaceful

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

#God #Growing Up #Hard Work

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Book #Animal #Word Of God

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

#Spiritual #Simple #People

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

#Faith #God #Eye

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Sympathy #Depression #Light

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

#Life #Moving On #Business

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

#World #May #Language

Between God and Me there is no 'Between'.
-- Meister Eckhart

To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.
-- Meister Eckhart

#God #Emptiness #Empty

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

#Mother #Born #Meant To Be

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

#Letting Go #Life Is #Speak

God cannot know himself without me.
-- Meister Eckhart

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

#Love #Spiritual #Compassion

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

#Meditation #Needs #Would Be

The more we have the less we own.
-- 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

#Years #Yesterday #Tomorrow

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#God #Made #Should

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
-- Meister Eckhart

#God #Peace #Heart

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

#God #Home #Gone

Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door.
-- Meister Eckhart

#God #Men #Hands

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Life #Truth #Writing

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Prayer #Lying #Men

What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Love #Men #Contemplation

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Letting Go #Memories #Angel

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

#God #Process #Ritual

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
-- Meister Eckhart

#Faith #Giving #Be Prepared

No-one knows what the soul is. But what we do know is, the soul is where God works compassion
-- Meister Eckhart

#Compassion #Soul

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

#Spiritual #Thinking #Worry

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

#People #Firsts #Achieve

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

#Philosophical #Soul #Subtraction

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Powerful #Prayer #Self

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Mother #Peace #Son

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

#All Time #Ready #Gift From God

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

#Faith #Heart #Years

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

#Faith #Order #Acting

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Important #Sitting #Hours

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Integrity #Men #Silence

If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.
-- Meister Eckhart

#I Love Him #Way #Benefits

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.
-- Meister Eckhart

#God #Creation #Stillness

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Thinking #Judging #People

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Stress #Bears #Looks

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Letting Go #Worry #Giving

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Existence #Presence Of God

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

#God #Jesus #Men

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Reality #Essence #Shells

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

#Work #Inward

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Want #Shells #Break

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

#Mind #Barriers

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Inward #Littles

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

#Magic #Something New

Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Compassion #Firsts #Doe

God is bound to act, to pour Himself into thee as soon as He shall find thee ready
-- Meister Eckhart

#Eternity #Thee #Ready

Nobody at any time is cut off from God.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Cutting

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Thinking #May #Doe

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Running #Spiritual #Solitude

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

#First Love #Firsts #God Love

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Eye #People #Inward

One must learn an inner solitude, wherever one may be.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Solitude #May

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

#Long

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

#Heart #Thinking #Next

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

#Soul #Spirituality #Eternity

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

#Soul #Steps #Want

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

#Letting Go #Way #Persons

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.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Thinking #Should

God is at home. We are in the far country.
-- Meister Eckhart

#Country #Home