“ Infidels and some ignorant Christians wonder about that, and even some priests have about that such a small knowledge as a stone's. They think of the Trinity as of three cows or three stones. But he who can make distinction in God without number or quantity, knows that the three persons are one God.”
“ This is my only and permanent complaint, that vulgar people, empty of the Spirit of God, want to judge solely by their human thinking what they listen to or read in the Bible, which has been pronounced and written by the Holy Spirit and in the Holy Spirit.”
“ Christ our Lord, only He is the end we should follow and the end in which we should stay, with Whom we will unite, being equal with Him in all His Glory. ... There is no saint in heaven so perfect, that you are not able to pass over his sanctity with sanctity and life, and even higher in heaven to come and eternally remain.”
“ All that God created six thousand years ago and even earlier, when He created the world, He creates all of them right now.”
“ God flows inside creatures, yet He remains untouched by all of them, He has no need of them whatsoever.”
“ His divinity depends on His power to share Himself with whatever is able to receive Him. If He was not sharing Himself, He would not be God.”
Nothing exists outside of God, except for the nothing itself.”
“ Let God work in you, give the work to God, and have peace. Don't worry if He works through your nature or above your nature, because both are His, nature and grace.”
“ Each angel has a complete nature and differs from the other angels as an animal differs from another animal with a different nature.”
“ If you take a fly inside God, this fly is more noble inside God than the highest angel is inside himself. All things inside God are equal, and they are God Himself.”
“ What has no essence, does not exist. There is no creature that has essence, because the essence of all is in the presence of God. If God went out of the creatures even for a single moment, they would disappear into nothingness.”
“ A man who exists without being separated from anything, receives the divinity wherefrom God Himself receives it.”
“ Where our coming and our having come converge and become one, there we are born, we are created from the beginning and we receive again the form of the first Image.”
“ If God was not inside everything, nature would stop any function and it would not ask for anything. You like it or not and you know it or not, nature mystically and in its greatest deep wants and asks for God.”
“ If two men existed who lived the exactly same life, and if one of them had worthily received the Holy Communion of the body of our Lord just one time more than the other, then this man would be like a bright sun compared with the other, and he would enjoy a greater union with God.”
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Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title Magister in theologia he obtained in Paris. Coming into prominence during the decadent Avignon Papacy and a time of increased tensions between the Franciscans and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Preacher Friars, he was brought up on charges later in life before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition. Tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII, his "Defence" is famous for his reasoned arguments to all challenged articles of his writing and his refutation of heretical intent. He purportedly died before his verdict was received, although no record of his death or burial site has ever been discovered.
Meister Eckhart is sometimes (erroneously) referred to as "Johannes Eckhart", although Eckhart was his given name and von Hochheim was his surname.
"Perhaps no mystic in the history of Christianity has been more influential and more controversial than the Dominican Meister Eckart. Few, if any, mystics have been as challenging to modern day readers and as resistant to agreed-upon interpretation."
—Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart