Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1327,) originally Johann Eckhart, also Eckhart von Hochheim, was a German Dominican mystic and writer. A theologian and preacher, he represented God as dwelling in man’s soul and charted a course of union between the individual soul and God.
Born near Gotha in Thuringia, Germany, Eckhart joined the Dominican convent of Erfurt and studied in Strasbourg and Cologne. In Paris, he received a master’s degree in theology in 1302. He became provincial in 1303, later vicar, in Bohemia. In 1311–13, he was again in Paris as a teacher and then was a professor of theology in Strasbourg until 1323. Finally, he taught and preached as a regent in Cologne.
Eckhart conceived an ambitious speculative and exegetical theology called the Opus Tripartitum. When Eckhart was accused of heretical teaching in 1326 and tried before the court of the Archbishop of Cologne, he appealed to the Pope but died during the proceedings. In 1329, Pope John XXII condemned Eckhart’s 28 propositions as heretical or misleading but declared that Eckhart had recanted before his death.
The translator and mysticism scholar Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache wrote the acclaimed biography Master Eckhart and the Rhineland Mystics (1957.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Meister Eckhart
The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Mistakes
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
To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God I everything we do, and whatever the job or place, keep on with him, letting nothing stand in our way.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Right, Rightness
If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And 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
Topics: Nature
The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity: with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.
—Meister Eckhart
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
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: Prayer, Meditation
If “thank you” is the only prayer you say, that will be enough.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Thankfulness
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
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
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: God, Divinity, Faith
The more we have the less we own.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Possessions, Property
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
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
In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Silence
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
Topics: The Present, Present
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
He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Serenity
Jesus might have said, “I became man for you. If you do not become God for me, you wrong me.”
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God
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
Topics: Identity
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
Topics: God
God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God, Love
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
Topics: God
The ultimate leave-taking is the leaving of God for God.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: God
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Truth
The man of God never rejoices because he is joy itself.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Joy, 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.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Simplicity
The Wayless Way, where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves.
—Meister Eckhart
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
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
All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Heart
No-one knows what the soul is. But what we do know is, the soul is where God works compassion
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Compassion
You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Compassion, Kindness
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
Topics: 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
Topics: Knowledge
God does not work in all hearts alike, but according to the preparation and sensitivity He finds in each.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Preparation
God wants nothing from you but the gift of a peaceful heart.
—Meister Eckhart
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Prayer, Gratitude, Blessings, Love, Thankfulness, Appreciation, Life
Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.
—Meister Eckhart
Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
—Meister Eckhart
Topics: Beginnings
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