Meister Eckhart Quotes on God
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328) is the central figure of the Rhineland mystical tradition. The German vernacular sermons and the Latin scholastic writings — the Three-Part Work, the Defense, the Parisian Questions — develop a metaphysical theology of the divine ground (grunt) of the soul that is identical with the divine ground of God: at the apex of the soul's purification, the soul does not merely know God but is one with the eternal generation of the Word in the bosom of the Father. The framework drew the censure of Pope John XXII in 1329, but the German vernacular preaching shaped the Devotio Moderna, the German philosophical mystical tradition through Tauler, Suso, and Cusa, and — through the later reception of the sermons — Hegel, Heidegger, and twentieth-century interreligious philosophical theology.
Quotes
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“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.”
Sermon IV : True Hearing -
Attributed to Meister Eckhart:
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
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Attributed to Meister Eckhart:
“God is at home; we are in the far country.”
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“Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.”
Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (1941) by Raymond Bernard Blakney, p. 240 -
“The most powerful prayer , one wellnigh omnipotent, and the worthiest work of all is the outcome of a quiet mind . The quieter it is the more powerful , the worthier , the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is. To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self -seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead to its own.”
As translated in A Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Western Mysticism (1985) by Patrick Grant -
“God wants nothing of you but the gift of a peaceful heart .”
As translated in The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose (1991) edited by Stephen Mitchell , p. 115 -
“Unmovable disinterest brings man into likeness of God . ... To be full of things is to be empty of God; to be empty of things is to be full of God.”
As quoted in Men Who Have Walked with God (1992) by Sheldon Cheney, p. 198 -
“We are all meant to be mothers of God , for God is always needing to be born .”
As quoted in Christianity (1995) by Joe Jenkins, p. 27 -
“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’s Sermons(1909) | Sermon V : The Self-Communication of God -
“As God can only be seen by His own light, so He can only be loved by His own love.”
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons(1909) | Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality -
“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’s Sermons(1909) | Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality -
“A person should never be satisfied with a thought God, for when the thought perishes, the God also perishes.”
Deutsche Predigten und Traktate (1963), p. 60 -
“The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without.”
Quoted by Aldous Huxley , in The Perennial Philosophy (1945) -
“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’s Sermons(1909) | Sermon V : The Self-Communication of God -
“God can dispense with us just as little as we can dispense with him.”
Sermon 49 -
“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’s Sermons(1909) | Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality -
“We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.”
Quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 232