1260-1326 AD, German Mystic
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.
Meister Eckhart – [Self-knowledge]
All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
Meister Eckhart – [Heart]
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.
Meister Eckhart – [Self-expression]
God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk.
Meister Eckhart – [God]
He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
Meister Eckhart – [Detachment]
If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.
Meister Eckhart – [Soul]
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhart – [Prayer]
Jesus might have said, ''I became man for you. If you do not become God for me, you wrong me.''
Meister Eckhart – [God]
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.
Meister Eckhart – [God]
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart – [Truth]
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.
Meister Eckhart – [Knowledge]
The more we have the less we own.
Meister Eckhart – [Possessions]
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.
Meister Eckhart – [God]
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.
Meister Eckhart – [Present]
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.
Meister Eckhart – [Time and Time Management]
To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.
Meister Eckhart – [God]
To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God I everything we do, and whatever the job or place, keep on with him, letting nothing stand in our way.
Meister Eckhart – [Right and Rightness]
To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, 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.
Meister Eckhart – [Prayer]
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.
Meister Eckhart – [Birth]
What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
Meister Eckhart – [Childhood]