Meister Eckhart Quotes - Page 8

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.

There is no greater valor nor no sterner fight. He who would be what he ought to be must stop being what he is.

No-one knows what the soul is. But what we do know is, the soul is where God works compassion

Your own efforts "did not bring it to pass," only God-but rejoice if God found a use for your efforts in His work.

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.

Therefore, look only for this fishhook, and you will be happily caught. The more you are caught, the more you will be liberated.

No one is forgotten. It is a lie, any talk of God that does not comfort you.

The greatest power available to man is not to use it.

The soul loves the body. And consider too how it is that the body is more in the soul than the soul is in the body.

There is no stopping place in this life--nor is there ever one for any person, no matter how far along the way one's gone.

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.

What our Lord did was done with the intent, and this alone, that he might be with us and we with him.

One must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.

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.

It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else.

This then is salvation - when we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise their beautiful Creator.

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.

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.

The soul will bring forth Person if God laughs into her and she laughs back to him. To speak in parable, the Father laughs into the Son and the Son laughs back to the Father; and this laughter breeds liking and liking breeds joy, and joy begets love, and love begets Person, and Person begets the Holy Ghost.

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

Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.

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

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

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.