Meister Eckhart quotes

Meister Eckhart was a German theologian, philosopher, and mystic of the late Middle Ages. His sermons and writings explored the nature of God, the soul, and the possibility of direct experience of the divine. He became a central figure in Christian mysticism and continues to influence spiritual thinkers today. Here are 107 of his quotes:

The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.

Meister Eckhart

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

Meister Eckhart

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

The eyes that see God are the same eyes through which God sees me.

Meister Eckhart

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Meister Eckhart

The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.

Meister Eckhart

Every creature is a word of God.

Meister Eckhart

The more we have the less we own.

Meister Eckhart

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.

Meister Eckhart

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.

Meister Eckhart

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

Meister Eckhart

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

Meister Eckhart

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

As God can only be seen by His own light, so He can only be loved by His own love.

Meister Eckhart

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

Only those who have dared to let go can dare to reenter.

Meister Eckhart

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

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

Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.

Meister Eckhart

The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without.

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.

Meister Eckhart

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