Quotes from Meister Eckhart

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

God never gives, nor did He ever give a gift, merely that man might have it and be content with it. No, all gifts which He ever gave in heaven or on earth, He gave with one sole purpose - to make one single gift: Himself. With all His gifts He desires only to prepare us for the one gift, which is Himself.

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.

our Lord said, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit' (Matt. 5:3), which is to say those who are poor in will.

If the only prayer you say in your entire life is 'thank you,' that will be enough. ~ Meister Eckhart

And so I tell you that we should learn to see God in all gifts and works, neither resting content with anything nor becoming attached to anything. For us there can be no attachment to a particular manner of behaviour in this life, nor has this ever been right, however successful we may have been.

Pay heed to this, how you are turned toward your God, when you are in church or in your cell. Maintain this same state of mind and bear it among the crowd and into unrest and dissimilarity.

To serve God with fear is good; to serve Him out of love is better; but to fear and love Him together is best of all. To have a restful or peaceful life in God is good; to bear a life of pain in patience is better; but to have peace in the midst of pain is the best of all.

for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works.

God is equally near to everything and every place and is equally ready to give himself, so far as in him lies, and therefore a person shall know him aright who knows how to see him the same, under all circumstances.

May you find great value in these You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

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.

It is the nature of the Word to reveal to me what has been hidden.

Yet the now of time is infinitesimally small. If you remove the now of time, you are in all places and possess all time.

An angel exists and works as an intelligence, and its state is one of beholding God ceaselessly, who is the object of its intellectual essence.

Love covers a multitude of sins' (1 Peter 4:8). For where there is sin, there can be neither complete trust nor love, since love completely covers over sins and knows nothing of them. Not in such a way as if we had not sinned, but rather it wipes them away and drives them out, as if they had never existed.

Listening leads us more inside ourselves whereas seeing leads us more outside—the work of seeing itself, that is. And, therefore, we will be far more blessed with eternal life by the power of listening than by the power of sight. The act of listening allows me to hear the eternal Word spoken with me, whereas sight leads me astray, to what is outside myself. In listening, I suffer (or allow); in seeing, I work.

Furthermore, we should keep all things only as if they had been merely lent and not given to us, without any sense of possessiveness, whether it be our body or soul, our senses, faculties, worldly goods or honour, friends, relations, house or home or anything whatsoever.

They who can go without all things, not needing them, are far more blessed than they who possess them in their need. That person is the best who can do without what they do not need.

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.

That we may 'live in eternity', so help us God. Amen.

Truly, if someone were to renounce a kingdom or the whole world while still holding on to themselves, then they would have renounced nothing at all.

they do him wrong who take God just in one particular way. They take the way rather than God' (Sermon 19).

If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour.