Meister Eckhart Quotes

The knower and the known are one.

say, ‘I wish to come to you so that your wealth shall fill my poverty, your infinity shall fill my emptiness, and your immeasurable, incomprehensible Godhead shall fill my base and wretched humanity.

And then, if the child is born in me, the sight of my father and all my friends slain before my eyes would leave my heart untouched. For if my heart were moved thereby, the child would not have been born in me, though its birth might be near.

Where there is Isness, there God is. Creation is the giving of isness from God. And that is why God becomes where any creature expresses God.

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.

Only those for whom God is present in all things and who make the very best use of their reason, know what true peace is and truly possess heaven.

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

Yet if someone comes to know something well, they soon tire of it and seek out something new, and repeat this pattern again and again, continually anxious to know new things, never lingering on what they've learned.

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

A day, whether six or seven years ago or whether six thousand years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why? Because all time is contained in now.

It is a lie - any talk of God that does not comfort you.

A perfect and true will can only exist when we have been entirely taken up into God's will and no longer have our own will; whoever does this the more, the more and the more truly they are rooted in God. Indeed, a single Ave Maria spoken in this spirit, when we have stripped ourselves of ourselves, is worth more than the repetition of a thousand psalters without it. In fact, a single step would be better with it than to cross the sea without it.

Indeed, even if you make God your goal, all the works you perform for his sake will be dead, and you will only spoil those works which are genuinely good. Not only will you spoil your good works, but you will also commit sins, for you will be behaving like a gardener who is supposed to plant a garden but who pulls out all the trees instead and then demands his wages. That is how you will spoil your good works. And so, if you wish to live and wish your works to live too, then you must be dead to all things and be reduced to nothing. It is a property of creatures to make one thing from another, but it is a property of God to make something from nothing. And so if God is to make something of you or in you, then you must first yourself become nothingness. Enter your own inner ground therefore and act from there, and all your works shall be living works. That is why ' the wise man' says that 'the just person lives in eternity' since it is because they are just that such a person acts, and all their works are living works.

We should not content ourselves with a God of thoughts for, when the thoughts come to an end, so too shall God. Rather, we should have a living God who is beyond the thoughts of all people and all creatures. That kind of God will not leave us, unless we ourselves choose to turn away from him.

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