Meister Eckhart quotes:

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 the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

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.

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

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.

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

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.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

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

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.

The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.

When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order.

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

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.

What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.

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.

Every creature is a word of God.

Outward as well as inward morality helps to form the idea of a true Christian freedom. We are right to lay stress on inwardness, but in this world there is no inwardness without an outward expression.

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

It is in the darkness that one finds the light.

If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.

To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.

The seed of God is in us. If the seed had a good, wise and industrious cultivator, it would thrive all the more and grow up to God whose seed it is, and the fruit would be equal to the nature of God. Now the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree, and the seed of God into God.

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

I have sought earnestly and with great diligence that good and high virtue by which man may draw closest to God... and as far as my intelligence would permit, I find that high virtue to be pure disinterest, that is, detachment from creatures. Our Lord said to Martha 'Unum est necessarium', which is to say; to be untroubled and pure, one thing is necessary and that is disinterest.

Nature's intent is neither food, nor drink, nor clothing, nor comfort, nor anything else in which God is left out. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly nature seeks, hunts, tries to ferret out the track on which God may be found.

Our best chance of finding God is to look in the place where we left him.

What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.

For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again.

By humility, out of an enemy He has made a friend, which is more than to have created a new earth.

God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk.

Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.

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

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.

A life of rest and peace in God is good; a life of pain lived in patience is still better; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.

[...] Cause in eternity there's no yesterday or tomorrow, but only Now

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

A just person is one who is conformed and transformed into justice.

Even now one rarely hears of people achieving great things unless they first stumble in some respect.

The less theorizing you do about God, the more receptive you are to His inpouring.

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.

The love by which we love God is the very same love with which God has first loved us.

If we seek God for our own good and profit, we are not seeking God.

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.

God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.

The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.

Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time: and not only time but temporalities, not only temporal things but temporal affections, not only temporal affections but the very taint and smell of time.

A pure heart is one that is unencumbered, unworried, uncommitted and which does not want its own way about anything but which, rather, is submerged in the loving will of God.

Though it may be called a nescience, and unknowing, yet there is in it more than all knowing and understanding without it; for this unknowing lures and attracts you from all understood things, and from yourself as well.

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.

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.

Words derive their power from the original word.

.... all blades of grass, wood, and stone, all things are One.

...Where and when God finds you ready, he must act and overflow into you, just as when the air is clear and pure, the sun must overflow into it and cannot refrain from doing that.

[W]e must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge.

A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or worship and which does not seek its own interest in anything but is always immersed in God's most precious will. . . . There is no work which men and women can perform, however small, which does not draw from this its power and strength.

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.

A man should orient his will and all his works to God and having only God in view go forward unafraid, not thinking, am I right or am I wrong? One who worked out all the chances before starting his first fight would never fight at all. And if, going to someplace, we must think how to set the front foot down, we shall never get there. It is our duty to do the next thing: go straight on, that is the right way.

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.

Above all else, know this: Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive

Above thought is the intellect, which still seeks: it goes about looking, spies out here and there, picks up and drops. But above the intellect that seeks is another intellect which does not seek but stays in its pure, simple being, which is embraced in that light.

Action and becoming are one.

All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself "¦ and let God be God in you

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.

And so, too, I speak of love: he who is held by it is held by the strongest of bonds, and yet the stress is pleasant. Moreover, he can sweetly bear all that happens to him. When one has found this bond, he looks for no other.

And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.

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.

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

As long as I am this or that, I am not all things.

As long as I am this or that, or have this or that, I am not all things and I have not all things. Become pure till you neither are nor have either this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things.

Be ready at all times for the gifts of God, and always for new ones.

Become aware of what is in you. Announce it, pronounce it, produce it, and give birth to it.

Behold how all those people are merchants who shun great sins and would like to be good and do good deeds in God's honour, such as fasts, vigils, prayers, and similar good deeds of all kinds. They do all these things so that our Lord may give them something, or so that God may do something dear to them. All these people are merchants.

Between God and Me there is no 'Between'.

Compassion is where peace and justice kiss

Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.

Do not think that saintliness comes from occupation; it depends rather on what one is. The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy.

Even stones have a love, a love that seeks the ground.

Everything is full and pure at its source and precisely there, not outside.

Everything is meant to be lost, that the soul may stand in unhampered nothingness

Existence itself stands in need of nothing, for it lacks nothing, whereas everything else needs it, because outside of it there is nothing. Nothingness stands in need of existence, as a sick man lacks health and is in need. Health has no need of a sick man. To want nothing, therefore, characterizes the highest perfection, is fullest and purest existence.

For a heart to be perfectly ready it has to be perfectly empty. In this condition it has attained its maximum capacity.

For then I knew my soul - every soul - has always held Him.

God cannot know himself without me.

God does not work in all hearts alike, but according to the preparation and sensitivity He finds in each.

God holds each of us by a string. When we sin, we cut the string. But God ties it up again, making a knot. Each time our wrongdoing cuts the string, God ties another knot drawing us up closer to Him.

God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.

God is at his greatest when I am at my least.

God is at home. We are in the far country.

God is bound to act, to pour Himself into thee as soon as He shall find thee ready

God is equally near in all creatures.

God is greater than God.

God is in all things, but so far as God is Divine and so far as He is rational, God is nowhere so properly as in the soul - in the innermost of the soul

God is intelligence occupied with knowing itself.

God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.

God is nearer to me than I am to myself; He is just as near to wood and stone, but they do not know it.

God is not good, or else he could do better.

God is the word that speaks itself.

God must act and pour himself into you the moment he finds you ready. Don't imagine that God can be compared to an earthly carpenter, who acts or doesn't act, as he wishes; who can will to do something or leave it undone, according to his pleasure. It is not that way with God: where and when God finds you ready, he must act and overflow into you, just as when the air is clear and pure, the sun must overflow into it and cannot refrain from doing that.

Grace pours all beauty into the soul ... The soul means the world.

He is conscious only of God...To be conscious of knowing God is to know about God and self.

He who can make distinction in God without number or quantity, knows that the three persons of the Trinity are one God.

I am what I wanted and I want what I am.

I do not find God outside myself or conceive him except as my own and in me.

I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely. I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.

I have often said that a person who wishes to begin a good life should be like one who draws a circle. Let him or her get the center in the right place and keep it so and the circumference will be good.

I maintain that all sorrow comes from love of those things of which loss deprives me.

I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!

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

I tell you the truth, any object you have in your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost Truth.

I will be silent and will hear what God will say in me...If God wishes to speak to me, let him enter. I will not go out.

If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: 'Why are you living?' life, if it could answer, would only say, 'I live so that I may live.' That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living.

If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.

If I say that God is good, that is not true. God is not good. I am good, and if I say that God is wise, that is not true. I am wiser than he is.

If the seal is pressed completely through the wax so that no wax remains without being impressed by the seal, then it becomes indistinguishably one with the seal. Similarly the soul becomes completely united with God.

If we keep our eyes fixed on God alone, then truly he must work in us and nothing, neither the crowd nor any place can hinder him in this.

If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than yourself, you will not 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. Thus he is the great righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally.

If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. An likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence.