Meister Eckhart Quotes

Meister Eckhart Quote: The whole Being of God is contained in God alone.

God is equally near in all creatures.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Nearness of the Kingdom)

The whole Being of God is contained in God alone.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Nearness of the Kingdom)

Perfect humility tends to the annihilation of self.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Sanctification)

Therefore God must of necessity give Himself to a sanctified heart.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Sanctification)

God has remained from everlasting in immovable sanctity, and still remains so.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Sanctification)

Grace is from God, and works in the depth of the soul whose powers it employs.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Outward and Inward Morality)

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

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Outward and Inward Morality)

When the Divine Light penetrates the soul, it is united with God as light with light.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Outward and Inward Morality)

Light causes flowers and plants to grow and bear fruit; in animals it produces life, but in men blessedness.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Outward and Inward Morality)

It is more worthy of God that He be born spiritually of every pure and virgin soul, than that He be born of Mary.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Angel's Greeting)

Although God is Almighty, He can only work in a heart when He finds readiness or makes it. He works differently in men than in stones.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Sanctification)



The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - True Hearing)

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 (Sermons - Outward and Inward Morality)

But here on earth man never attains to being unaffected by external things. There never was a Saint so great as to be immovable. I can never arrive at a state when discord shall be as pleasing to my ears as harmony.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Outward and Inward Morality)

Therefore sanctification is the best of all things, for it cleanses the soul, and illuminates the conscience, and kindles the heart, and wakens the spirit, and girds up the loins, and glorifies virtue and separates us from creatures, and unites us with God.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Sanctification)

The man who is wholly sanctified is so drawn towards the Eternal, that no transitory thing may move him, no corporeal thing affect him, no earthly thing attract him. This was the meaning of St Paul when he said, "I live; yet not I; Christ liveth in me."

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Sanctification)



Now rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, that you are so united with God that no one may separate you from Him. I cannot fully praise nor love Him therefore must I die, and cast myself into the divine void, till I rise from non-existence to existence.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Self-Communication of God)

The moral task of man is a process of spiritualization. All creatures are go-betweens, and we are placed in time that by diligence in spiritual business we may grow liker and nearer to God. The aim of man is beyond the temporal —in the serene region of the everlasting Present.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Outward and Inward Morality)

The more that the soul receives of the Divine Nature, the more it grows like It, and the closer becomes its union with God. It may arrive at such an intimate union that God at last draws it to Himself altogether, so that there is no distinction left, in the soul's consciousness, between itself and God, though God still regards it as a creature.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Self-Communication of God)

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.
All that God worketh and teacheth, He worketh in His Son.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - True Hearing)

If the soul is to know God it must forget itself and lose itself, for as long as it contemplates self, it cannot contemplate God. When it has lost itself and everything in God, it finds itself again in God when it attains to the knowledge of Him, and it finds also everything which it had abandoned complete in God. I

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Nearness of the Kingdom)

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.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Nearness of the Kingdom)

He yearns after us, and in the depth of His Divine Being waves of longing break forth, to reveal to us the abyss of His Godhead, and the fullness of His essence; He hastens to identify Himself with us. Herein He hath joy and gladness in full measure. God loveth men not less than He loveth Himself. If thou really lovest thyself, thou lovest all men as thyself; as long as thou lovest any one less than thyself, thou dost not really love thyself. That man is right who loves all men as himself.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - True Hearing)

Three things hinder us from hearing the everlasting Word. The first is fleshliness, the second is distraction, the third is the illusion of time. If a man could get free of these, he would dwell in eternity, and in the spirit, and in solitude, and in the desert, and there would hear the everlasting Word. Our Lord saith, "No man can hear My word nor my teaching without renouncing himself." 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 (Sermons - True Hearing)

The first beginning is for the sake of the last end. God Himself doth not rest because He is the beginning, but because He is the end and goal of all creation. This end is concealed in the darkness of the everlasting Godhead, and is unknown, and never was known, and never will be known. God Himself remains unknown; the light of the everlasting Father shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. May the truth of which we have spoken lead us to the truth. Amen.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Angel's Greeting)

Again: If I am in a higher place and say to some one, "Come up hither," that might be difficult for him. But if I say, "Sit down," that would be easy. Thus God dealeth with us. When man humbles himself, God cannot restrain His mercy; He must come down and pour His grace into the humble man, and He gives Himself most of all, and all at once, to the least of all. It is essential to God to give, for His essence is His goodness and His goodness is His love.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Angel's Greeting)

The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills. If he were ill he would not wish to be well. If he really abides in God's will, all pain is to him a joy, all complication, simple: yea, even the pains of hell would be a joy to him. He is free and gone out from himself, and from all that he receives, he must be free. If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour. The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - True Hearing)

The man who abides in God's love must be dead to himself and all created things, and regard himself as a mere unit among a thousand million. Such a man must renounce himself and all the world. Supposing a man possessed all the world, and gave it back to God intact just as he received it, God would give him back, all the world and everlasting life to boot. And supposing there were another man who had nothing but a good will, and he thought in his heart, "Lord, were all this world mine, and two worlds more beside it, I would give them and myself also back to Thee as I received them from thee"; to that man God would give back as much as he had given away. And supposing a man had renounced himself for twenty years, if he took himself back for a moment, that man's renunciation would be as nothing. The man who has truly renounced himself and does not once cast a glance on what he has renounced, and thus remains immovable and unalterable, that man alone has really renounced self. May God and the Eternal Wisdom grant us to remain equally immovable and unalterable with Himself. Amen.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - True Hearing)

Now the question arises what is sanctification, since it has so lofty a rank. Thou shouldest know that real sanctification consists in this that the spirit remain as immovable and unaffected by all impact of love or hate, joy or sorrow, honour or shame, as a huge mountain is unstirred by a gentle breeze. This immovable sanctification causes man to attain the nearest likeness to God that he is capable of. God's very essence consists of His immovable sanctity; thence springs His glory and unity and impassibility. If a man is to become as like God as a creature may, that must be by sanctification. It is this which draws men upward to glory, and from glory to unity, and from unity to impassibility, and effects a resemblance between God and men. The chief agent in this is grace, because grace draws men from the transitory and purifies them from the earthly. And thou shouldest know that to be empty of all creature's love is to be full of God, and to be full of creature-love is to be empty of God

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - Sanctification)

Schoolmen have often asked how it is possible for the soul to know God. It is not from severity that God demands much from men in order to obtain the knowledge of Himself: it is of His kindness that He wills the soul by effort to grow capacious of receiving much, and that He may give much. Let no man think that to attain this knowledge is too difficult, although it may sound so, and indeed the commencement of it, and the renouncement of all things, is difficult. But when one attains to it, no life is easier nor more pleasant nor more lovable, since God is always endeavouring to dwell with man, and teach him in order to bring him to Himself. No man desires anything so eagerly as God desires to bring men to the knowledge of Himself. God is always ready, but we are very unready. God is near us, but we are far from Him. God is within, and we are without. God is friendly; we are estranged. The prophet saith, 'God leadeth the righteous by a narrow path into a broad and wide place, that is into the true freedom of those who have become one spirit with God.' May God help us all to follow Him that He may bring us to Himself. Amen.

Meister Eckhart (Sermons - The Nearness of the Kingdom)

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Meister Eckhart Biography

Meister Eckhart portrait

Born: 1260
Died: 1328

Meister Eckhart was a German philosopher, theologian and Christian mystic. He was and still is known and revered for his powerful spiritual ideas mediated through his influential sermons.

Notable Works

Sermons