Verified quotes

Verified quotes from Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart is one of the most quoted and most misquoted writers in the history of Christian mysticism. His name travels well. A short, startling line with his name under it looks wise on a poster or a slide, and nobody checks it before it gets shared again. Over time this has filled the internet with sentences Eckhart never wrote, next to sentences he did write but trimmed of the sermon around them.

The quotes below come only from the sermons and treatises printed in C. de B. Evans's English translation of Franz Pfeiffer's edition, volume 1, published in 1924 and now in the public domain. Each one is tagged to its sermon so you can trace it back. Sermon numbers here follow the older Evans and Pfeiffer order, which is not the same numbering used in the more recent Quint or Walshe editions, so a line that is 'Sermon 6' on this page may carry a different number elsewhere.

After the verified quotes there is a separate list of lines that circulate as Eckhart's but are not in any edition of his work, or belong to someone else entirely. Some of these are close to things Eckhart actually said, which is part of why they spread so easily.

The birth of God in the soul

Eckhart returns again and again to one image: God is born not just once in Bethlehem, but born now, in the ground of the soul, if a person will let it happen.

St Augustine says this birth is always happening. But if it doesn't happen in me, what good does it do me? What matters is that it happens in me.
Sermon 1: The eternal birth of the Word in the soul

We must sink into forgetting and not-knowing. In this silence, this quiet, the Word is heard. There is no better way to approach this Word than in silence, in quiet: we hear it and know it rightly in unknowing. To one who knows nothing it is clearly revealed.
Sermon 2: The birth of God in the ground of the soul

God never spoke but one word, and it is still unspoken. Here is the explanation. The eternal Word is the logos of the Father, which is his only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. In him the Father speaks all creatures without beginning and without end. This is why the Word remains unborn, for it never came out of the Father.
Sermon 17: The eternal Word and its birth in the soul

I tend to say, when people ask me what God is doing, that he is begetting his Son, bearing him ever fresh and new and with such delight that he does nothing else besides this work, with his Holy Spirit, and all things are in it.
Sermon 48: The angel who prepares the soul for God's birth

The Father is begetting his Son without ceasing, and furthermore, I say, he begets me as his Son, as his very own Son. Moreover I declare, he not only begets me as his Son, he begets me as himself and himself as me: me as his essence and his nature.
Sermon 65: The just live for ever: justice, equality, and birth in the soul

One scripture says, 'The greatest gift is that we are God's child': that he begets his Son in us.
Sermon 90: Sermon 90: when God's Son is born in the soul

Living without a why

For Eckhart the highest life does not work for a reward or a reason outside itself, it simply lives, the way a flame burns.

So it is with the person who is at one with God: he is completely free in everything he does; he does it out of love and without a why, simply to glorify God, not seeking anything of his own in it, with God working in him.
Sermon 6: Jesus clears the temple: Eckhart on the soul as God's own house

Here God's ground is my ground and my ground is God's ground. Here I live in what is my own as God lives in what is his own. To one who has seen into this ground even for an instant, a thousand ducats of pure beaten gold are worth no more than a counterfeit coin. Out of this innermost ground your works should be done without why.
Sermon 13: Sharing Christ's nature and living without a why

We could question life for a thousand years: 'Why do you live?' It would only say, if it answered at all, 'I live because I live.' For life lives out of its own ground, wells up out of itself. It lives without a cause, for it lives itself.
Sermon 13: Sharing Christ's nature and living without a why

This spirit has no why, for if it had a why the unity would also have its why. This spirit is in unity and freedom.
Sermon 74: The promise of the Father and the life that asks no why

All God's commandments come from love, from the kindness of his nature; if they did not come from love they would not be God's law, for God's law is the goodness of his nature and his nature is his kind law. Whoever lives in love lives in the goodness of his nature: he lives in God's love, and love is without why.
Sermon 81: Love without why and the true meaning of letting go

Whoever lives without a why has given up nothing, and by doing this we gain the whole world and abundance.
The Sayings: Sayings of Meister Eckhart: God born in the soul, part one

Detachment and letting go

Abgeschiedenheit, usually translated detachment, is less about giving things up than about no longer being gripped by them.

I answer that when you have emptied yourself completely of your own self and all things and every kind of selfishness, and have transferred, united, and abandoned yourself to God in perfect faith and complete love, then everything that is born in you or enters into you, outward or inward, joyful or sorrowful, sour or sweet, is no longer your own at all, but belongs entirely to your God, to whom you have abandoned yourself.
Sermon 3: Being about the Father's business: the birth of God and the active life

Above all, make no claim on anything. Let go of yourself and let God act for you and in you as he pleases. This work is his, this Word is his, this birth is his, and all that you are besides. For you have abandoned yourself and gone out of your faculties and your own nature. God settles himself in your nature and powers when, stripped of all belongings, you go into the desert, as it is written, 'A voice crying in the wilderness.' Let this eternal voice cry on in you as it sweetly pleases, and be a desert yourself with respect to self and creatures.
Sermon 3: Being about the Father's business: the birth of God and the active life

Do you want to be free of any taint of trading? Then do what good you can and do it only for God's glory, as detached from it yourself as if you were not there. Ask nothing at all in return.
Sermon 6: Jesus clears the temple: Eckhart on the soul as God's own house

I have read many writings of pagan philosophers and sages, of the old covenant and the new, and I have searched hard and carefully for the best and highest virtue by which a person can bind himself most closely to God, and by which he becomes most like his original pattern, as he was in God, where there was no difference between himself and God, before God created any creature. And after studying all these writings as deeply as I could, I find it is nothing other than complete detachment from all created things.
Tractate 9: On detachment: Eckhart's treatise on letting go of all things

True detachment means a mind as little moved by what happens, by joy and sorrow, honor and disgrace, as a wide mountain is by a gentle breeze. This unmoving detachment makes a person supremely like God. God is God because of his unmoving detachment, and it is from his detachment that he gets his purity and his simplicity and his unchangeableness.
Tractate 9: On detachment: Eckhart's treatise on letting go of all things

I want you to know that to be empty of creatures is to be full of God, and to be full of creatures is to be empty of God.
Tractate 9: On detachment: Eckhart's treatise on letting go of all things

The ground and the spark of the soul

Eckhart describes a point in the soul untouched by time, image, or activity, where God alone can enter.

As I just said, it is in the purest part of the soul, in the noblest part, in her ground, yes in the very essence of the soul. That is the middle of silence, for no creature has ever gotten in there, nor any image, and the soul has there neither activity nor understanding, so she is not aware of any image, either of herself or of any creature.
Sermon 1: The eternal birth of the Word in the soul

The spark (that is, the intellect, the head of the soul), the so-called husband of the soul, is nothing other than a spark of the divine nature, a divine light, a ray, an imprint of divinity.
Sermon 31: The man in the soul: Eckhart on intellect as the soul's husband

And in another sense the servant means the angels, *the angels always calling us with an inner voice.* Third, I think this servant is the spark of the soul, which is sent there by God and is his light striking down from above, the reflection, or image, of his divine nature, always opposed to anything ungodly: not a power of the soul, as some theologians make it, but a permanent tendency toward good; even in hell it is inclined toward good.
Sermon 32: The great supper and the spark of the soul

It pierces to naked being and grasps God bare, before he is clothed in thought with wisdom and goodness.
Sermon 43: Knowledge, love, and the ground where God and the soul meet

While I existed in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fountain of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing: there was no one to ask me.
Sermon 56: God's work in the soul: the flowing out and the return

Now I say, if you turn away from your own self and from created things, then to the extent you do this you reach unity and happiness in your soul-spark, a thing that is beyond time and space. This spark opposes creatures. It wants nothing but God, God as he is in himself.
Sermon 60: Likes love and unite: the soul's spark and the ground beyond God

Silence, unknowing, and God beyond words

Eckhart is careful to say what cannot be said about God, and to treat that failure as a kind of knowledge in itself.

No one can say exactly what God is. According to St Dionysius, God is not anything we can say or think. St Augustine cries out: I who have always been in God and always will be, would rather never have been and never be again than that we found a single word we could say about God.
Sermon 15: Why no word or thought can reach God

For it is the height of knowledge and perception to know and understand through unknowing and non-perception. To know him truly is to know him as unknowable.
Sermon 15: Why no word or thought can reach God

God is to be sought in opposites. In unknowing knowing we shall know God, in forgetting ourselves and all things, even down to the naked essence of the Godhead.
Sermon 15: Why no word or thought can reach God

God is a Word, an unspoken word. Augustine says: 'All scripture is vain.' We say that God is unspoken, but he is unspeakable. Grant that he is something: who can pronounce this word? No one but the Word. God is the Word which speaks itself.
Sermon 22: The Lord put forth his hand: Eckhart on the unspoken Word

Now I say, anything we can think of in God or put any name to, that God is not. God goes beyond name, beyond nature.
Sermon 22: The Lord put forth his hand: Eckhart on the unspoken Word

Whoever thinks he sees God, if he sees anything, sees nothing of God.
Sermon 84: Like the morning star: Eckhart on God beyond being

God near at hand, in all things

Alongside the language of the unknowable Godhead, Eckhart keeps insisting that God is as close as a person's own breath.

Your face is turned so fully toward this birth that no matter what you see and hear, you receive nothing but this birth in anything. All things are simply God to you who see only God in all things.
Sermon 4: The eternal birth: finding God in the ground of the soul

The most excellent work of God in a creature is being. My father gives me my nature, but he does not give me my being: God does that, no one else. That is why everything that exists takes such keen delight in being. The being of the soul receives the inflow of God's light; not pure and clear as God sends it out, but in rippling waves. We can see the sunlight where it falls on a tree or any other object, but we cannot grasp the sun itself.
Sermon 23: The spirit of the Lord fills the world

God is in all things. The more he is in things, the more he is outside things: the more he is within, the more he is beyond. I've often said, God is creating the whole world right now, this instant. Everything God made six thousand years ago and more, when he made the world, God is making right now, all at once.
Sermon 66: God creates the world now, in the ground of the soul

God is nearer to me than I am to my own self; my life depends on God being near me, present in me. So he is also in a stone, a log of wood, only they do not know it.
Sermon 69: The kingdom of God is nearer than you think

A philosopher says, 'That man knows God rightly who is equally aware of him in all things'; and, 'To serve God in fear is good; to serve him in love is better, but whoever is able to see love in fear does best of all.'
Sermon 69: The kingdom of God is nearer than you think

Love and union with God

Love, in these sermons, is not a feeling added onto faith but the very thing that draws the soul and God together.

With love you overcome it most surely, with love you load it most heavily. God lies in wait for us, therefore, with nothing so much as with love. For love is like the fisherman's hook.
Sermon 4: The eternal birth: finding God in the ground of the soul

God is love, in the third place, in that his love drives all his lovers out of multiplicity. The love of God in multiplicity pursues the love which is himself, right out of multiplicity into his very unity.
Sermon 5: God is love: Eckhart on the soul's union with God

Know this! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend on his loving me, whether he wants to or not. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood.
Sermon 5: God is love: Eckhart on the soul's union with God

I am happy when all things are in me and God, and where I am, God is, and where God is, I am.
Sermon 5: God is love: Eckhart on the soul's union with God

Whoever clings to God with his whole being becomes one spirit with God.
Sermon 16: Three degrees of blessedness and the eternal now

In giving us his love, God has given us his Holy Spirit so that we can love him with the love with which he loves himself. We love God with his own love; awareness of it makes us divine.
Sermon 58: Divine understanding and the Father's eternal play

Poverty of spirit

Eckhart's hardest teaching may be this one: real poverty means wanting nothing, knowing nothing, and having nothing, not even as a private possession of the self.

But taking poverty in a higher sense, we say even more: a poor man is one who wills nothing, knows nothing, has nothing.
Sermon 87: On poverty of spirit: willing nothing, knowing nothing, having nothing

While I still stood in my first cause, I had no God and I was my own. I did not will, I did not want, for I was unconditioned being, the knower of myself in divine truth. Then I wanted myself and wanted nothing else. What I willed I was, and what I was I willed.
Sermon 87: On poverty of spirit: willing nothing, knowing nothing, having nothing

Poverty of spirit means freedom from God and all his works, so that if God wants to work within the soul, he must be his own workshop, as he likes to be.
Sermon 87: On poverty of spirit: willing nothing, knowing nothing, having nothing

This is what you shall do: you shall leave all willing and knowing and receiving of things, and at the very point where you have left all things, there God has given you all things; he dare not give you more, nor any more work with you, nor can you take in more, but you shall simply leave yourself.
Tractate 4: On the soul's final perfection and true poverty of spirit

Let us be eternally as poor as we were when we eternally were not. Remaining in him in our essence, we shall be what we are. We shall have everything in abundance, but in their creator. We shall know God without any sort of likeness and love without matter and enjoy without possession. We shall conceive all things in perfection as the eternal wisdom shows them planned out in itself.
Tractate 10: Spiritual poverty: becoming nothing so God can be all

The poor in spirit go out of themselves and all creatures: they are nothing, they have nothing, they do nothing, and these poor are nothing except that by grace they are God with God, which they are not aware of.
Tractate 10: Spiritual poverty: becoming nothing so God can be all

Quotes that are not his

"If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is thank you, that would suffice."

Not found in his works

This line is everywhere online under Eckhart's name, but the earliest traceable source is a 2002 book, A Bucket of Surprises by J. John and Mark Stibbe, not any sermon or treatise of Eckhart's. There is a real Eckhart sentence in the same spirit, sometimes rendered as 'if a man had no more to do with God than to be thankful, that would suffice,' which may be where the popular version got its start before it was simplified and detached from its source.

"Be willing to be a beginner every single morning."

No known source in Eckhart

This is one of the most shared 'Eckhart' lines on quote sites, but none of them point to an actual sermon, treatise, or page number. It reads like a modern self-help line rather than anything in the Evans or Walshe translations.

"And suddenly you know: it's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings."

Disputed, no text found

Wikiquote lists this under its disputed section for Eckhart, noting that it is widely circulated online but that no one has been able to tie it back to any actual text of his.

"There's a place in the soul where you've never been wounded."

Unverified

This line appears on many quote collection sites with no source given, and at least one of those sites flags it directly as not verified, with the source unknown. It does not match any passage in the Evans translation of the sermons or treatises.

"The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, asks not whether it's seen."

Not Eckhart, this is Angelus Silesius

This couplet comes from Der Cherubinische Wandersmann (The Cherubinic Wanderer), published in 1657 by the German mystic poet Angelus Silesius, under the heading 'Without Why.' Silesius was writing a century after Eckhart and was clearly working with Eckhart's own idea that a just life, like God, acts without a why. The image is Eckhart's, in spirit, but the lines themselves belong to Silesius.

How to check a quote yourself

If you come across a quote attributed to Eckhart and want to know whether it is real, start by looking for a sermon number or a named text. A quote with no reference at all, sitting alone on an image or a quote site, is the first sign to slow down. Genuine lines can almost always be traced to a sermon, a Talk of Instruction, the Book of Divine Consolation, or one of the treatises.

Next, check whether the wording matches an actual translation. The Evans translation used on this site is public domain and searchable, and so are Josef Quint's German critical edition and M. O'C. Walshe's English translation, which uses a different sermon numbering. If a phrase cannot be found in any of these, in any numbering, that is a strong sign it has been invented or borrowed from someone else, the way lines by Angelus Silesius or Johannes Tauler sometimes get folded into Eckhart's name because they sound alike.

Wikiquote keeps a useful 'disputed' section for exactly this problem, listing lines that are widely shared but cannot be sourced. It will not catch everything, but it is a quick first check. Beyond that, the safest habit is simply to read the quote in its surrounding paragraph before trusting it. Eckhart's sentences often turn on a careful distinction a few lines earlier or later, and a single line pulled free of that context can end up saying something close to the opposite of what he meant.