Meister Eckhart Quotes

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly all nature seeks God and works toward [God].

There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence.

Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.

Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.

One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God.

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.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

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 whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.

The very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within. Therefore it is said: ‘In the midst of silence the secret word was spoken to me’.

The most important hour is always the present.
The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now.
The most necessary work is always love.

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.

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.

Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God.

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.

If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man.