Eckhart von Hochheim OP, commonly known as Meister Eckhart or Eckehart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire. Profoundly inspirational Meister Eckhart quotes will fire up your brain and encourage you to look at life differently while making you laugh.
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Famous Meister Eckhart Quotes
There is something in the soul that is so akin to God that it is one with Him It has nothing in common with anything created. Meister Eckhart
All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you. God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be. Meister Eckhart
We must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge.
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.
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
One must learn an inner solitude, wherever one may be.
Do not imagine that your reason can grow to the knowledge of God. Meister Eckhart
Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.
If God is to be a giver, He must first find a taker, but no one may be a taker of God’s gifts except by his humility. Meister Eckhart
Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go. Meister Eckhart
And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
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. Meister Eckhart
People should not worry so 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.
Each time our wrongdoing cuts the string, God ties another knot drawing us up closer to Him. Meister Eckhart
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
The less theorizing you do about God, the more receptive you are to His inpouring. Meister Eckhart
God is not good, or else he could do better.
If you seek God and seek Him for your own profit and bliss, then in truth you are not seeking God. Meister Eckhart
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 whomever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.
We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything. Meister Eckhart
The most powerful form of prayer, and the one which can virtually gain all things and which is the worthiest work of all, is that which flows from a free mind. The freer the mind is, the more powerful and worthy, the more useful, praiseworthy and perfect the prayer and the work become. A free mind can achieve all things.
But where is this true possession of God, whereby we really possess him, to be found Meister Eckhart
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
No one knows what the soul is. But what we do know is, the soul is where God works compassion. Meister Eckhart
Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.
God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop. Meister Eckhart
There’s a place in the soul where you’ve never been wounded.
If you seek the kernel, you must break the shell. Meister Eckhart
There is no stopping place in this life nor is there ever one for any person, no matter how far along the way one’s gone. Meister Eckhart
Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.
If anyone went on for a thousand years asking life: Why are you living?’ life, if it could answer, would only say, ‘I live so that I may live Meister Eckhart
Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.
I declare truly that as long as anything is reflected in your mind which is not the eternal Word, or which looks away from the eternal Word, then, good as it may be, it is not the right thing. Meister Eckhart
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.
I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will! Meister Eckhart
Love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell. Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul.
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action. Meister Eckhart
The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.
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
I need to be silent for a while, worlds are forming in my heart.
Learn to behave thus even in deepest distress and keep yourself that way in any and every estate of life. Meister Eckhart
The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.
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
We are all meant to be mothers of God for God is always needing to be born.
Nothing is sharper than suffering, nothing is sweeter than to have suffered. Meister Eckhart
In this breaking through, I receive that God and I are one. Then I am what I was, and then I neither diminish nor increase, for I am then an immovable cause that moves all things.
