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Meister Eckhart

31 quotes

“Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (1941) by Raymond Bernard Blakney, p. 240
“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. 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 (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in A Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Western Mysticism (1985) by Patrick Grant
“God wants nothing of you but the gift of a peaceful heart.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose (1991) edited by Stephen Mitchell, p. 115
“Unmovable disinterest brings man into likeness of God. ... To be full of things is to be empty of God; to be empty of things is to be full of God.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Men Who Have Walked with God (1992) by Sheldon Cheney, p. 198
“We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Christianity (1995) by Joe Jenkins, p. 27
“When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. ... When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. Not for nothing did God give the keys into St. Peter's keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Ch. 9: The German Mystics, p. 448
“We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 232
“Only those who have dared to let go can dare to reenter.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 232
“Gott kann uns ebensowenig entbehren wie wir ihn.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Der Mensch soll sich nicht genügen lassen an einem gedachten Gott; denn wenn der Gedanke vergeht, so vergeht auch der Gott.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Deutsche Predigten und Traktate (1963), p. 60
“The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Aldous Huxley, in The Perennial Philosophy (1945)
“Now the Father draws us from the evil of sin to the goodness of His grace with the might of His measureless power, and He needs all the resources of His strength in order to convert sinners, more than when He was about to make heaven and earth, which He made with His own power without help from any creature. But when He is about to convert a sinner, He always needs the sinner's help. "He converts thee not without thy help," as St. Augustine says.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The everlasting and paternal wisdom saith, "Whoso heareth Me is not ashamed." If he is ashamed of anything he is ashamed of being ashamed. Whoso worketh in Me sineth not. Whoso confesseth Me and feareth Me, shall have eternal life. Whoso will hear the wisdom of the Father must dwell deep, and abide at home, and be at unity with himself.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that the Eternal Father teaches and reveals is His being, His nature, and His Godhead, which He manifests to us in His Son, and teaches us that we are also His Son.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills. If he were ill he would not wish to be well. If he really abides in God's will, all pain is to him a joy, all complication, simple: yea, even the pains of hell would be a joy to him. He is free and gone out from himself, and from all that he receives, he must be free. If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour. The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, that you are so united with God that no one may separate you from Him. I cannot fully praise nor love Him therefore must I die, and cast myself into the divine void, till I rise from non-existence to existence.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Father and the Son have one Will, and that Will is the Holy Ghost, Who gives Himself to the soul so that the Divine Nature permeates the powers of the soul so that it can only do God-like works.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Grace is from God, and works in the depth of the soul whose powers it employs. It is a light which issues forth to do service under the guidance of the Spirit. The Divine Light permeates the soul, and lifts it above the turmoil of temporal things to rest in God. The soul cannot progress except with the light which God has given it as a nuptial gift; love works the likeness of God into the soul. The peace, freedom and blessedness of all souls consist in their abiding in God's will. Towards this union with God for which it is created the soul strives perpetually.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The inner work is first of all the work of God's grace in the depth of the soul which subsequently distributes itself among the faculties of the soul, in that of Reason appearing as Belief, in that of Will as Love, and in that of Desire as Hope. When the Divine Light penetrates the soul, it is united with God as light with light. This is the light of faith. Faith bears the soul to heights unreachable by her natural senses and faculties.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the peculiar faculty of the eye is to see form and colour, and of the ear to hear sweet tones and voices, so is aspiration peculiar to the soul. To relax from ceaseless aspiration is sin. This energy of aspiration directed to and grasping God, as far as is possible for the creature, is called Hope, which is also a divine virtue. Through this faculty the soul acquires such great confidence that she deems nothing in the Divine Nature beyond her reach.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As God can only be seen by His own light, so He can only be loved by His own love.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This passage from nothingness to real being, this quitting of oneself is a birth accompanied by pain, for by it natural love is excluded. All grief except grief for sin comes from love of the world. In God is neither sorrow, nor grief, nor trouble. Wouldst thou be free from all grief and trouble, abide and walk in God, and to God alone. As long as love of the creature is in us, pain cannot cease.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Through the higher love the whole life of man is to be elevated from temporal selfishness to the spring of all love, to God: man will again be master over nature by abiding in God and lifting her up to God.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived. Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Ch. 9: The German Mystics, p. 449
“When man humbles himself, God cannot restrain His mercy; He must come down and pour His grace into the humble man, and He gives Himself most of all, and all at once, to the least of all. It is essential to God to give, for His essence is His goodness and His goodness is His love. Love is the root of all joy and sorrow. Slavish fear of God is to be put away. The right fear is the fear of losing God. If the earth flee downward from heaven, it finds heaven beneath it; if it flee upward, it comes again to heaven. The earth cannot flee from heaven: whether it flee up or down, the heaven rains its influence upon it, and stamps its impress upon it, and makes it fruitful, whether it be willing or not. Thus doth God with men: whoever thinketh to escape Him, flies into His bosom, for every corner is open to Him. God brings forth His Son in thee, whether thou likest it or not, whether thou sleepest or wakest; God worketh His own will. That man is unaware of it, is man's fault, for his taste is so spoilt by feeding on earthly things that he cannot relish God's love. If we had love to God, we should relish God, and all His works; we should receive all things from God, and work the same works as He worketh.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We read in the Gospels that Our Lord fed many people with five loaves and two fishes. Speaking parabolically, we may say that the first loaf was — that we should know ourselves, what we have been everlastingly to God, and what we now are to Him. The second — that we should pity our fellow Christian who is blinded; his loss should grieve us as much as our own. The third — that we should know our Lord Jesus Christ's life, and follow it to the utmost of our capacity. The fourth — that we should know the judgments of God. ... The fifth is — that we should know the Godhead which has flowed into the Father and filled Him with joy, and which has flowed into the Son and filled Him with wisdom, and the Two are essentially one.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sanctification is the best of all things, for it cleanses the soul, and illuminates the conscience, and kindles the heart, and wakens the spirit, and girds up the loins, and glorifies virtue and separates us from creatures, and unites us with God. The quickest means to bring us to perfection is suffering; none enjoy everlasting blessedness more than those who share with Christ the bitterest pangs. Nothing is sharper than suffering, nothing is sweeter than to have suffered. The surest foundation in which this perfection may rest is humility; whatever here crawls in the deepest abjectness, that the Spirit lifts to the very heights of God, for love brings suffering and suffering brings love.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All true morality, inward and outward, is comprehended in love, for love is the foundation of all the commandments. All outward morality must be built upon this basis, not on self-interest. As long as man loves something else than God, or outside God, he is not free, because he has not love. Therefore there is no inner freedom which does not manifest itself in works of love. True freedom is the government of nature in and outside man through God; freedom is essential existence unaffected by creatures. But love often begins with fear; fear is the approach to love: fear is like the awl which draws the shoemaker's thread through the leather.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) said by 1328 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source