Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.
—Meister Eckhart
God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Love, 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 very best and utmost of attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in thee.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Meditation, Prayer
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
Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love their 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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Faith, Divinity, God
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Truth
We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity…. But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Birth
He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Serenity
The more we have the less we own.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Possessions, Property
To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one’s mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Prayer, Solitude
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
Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.
—Meister Eckhart
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
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
The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Self-Discovery
The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity: with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.
—Meister Eckhart
God wants nothing from you but the gift of a peaceful heart.
—Meister Eckhart
Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest to all of us.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Light
If “thank you” is the only prayer you say, that will be enough.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Thankfulness
The ultimate leave-taking is the leaving of God for God.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Life, Prayer, Blessings, Appreciation, Thankfulness, Gratitude, Love
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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Simplicity
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
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
The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Mistakes
Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Beginnings
All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: 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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Faith
If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Soul
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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