Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.
Meister EckhartRead
Philosophers say the Soul is double-faced, her upper face gazes at God all the time and her lower face looks somewhat down, informing the senses; and the upper face, which is the summit of the soul, is in eternity and has nothing to do with time: it knows nothing of time or of body.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote describes the duality of the soul, emphasizing its spiritual connection to the eternal while being grounded in the physical world.
Meister Eckhart's quote portrays the concept of the soul as having two aspects: one that is constantly oriented towards the divine and eternal, and another that engages with the material world and sensory experiences. This duality illustrates the tension between spiritual enlightenment and earthly existence, suggesting that while the upper face of the soul seeks unity with God and transcends the limitations of time and the physical body, the lower face remains in touch with our sensory perceptions and the realities of life.
Themes
SoulSpiritualityDualityEternitySensesPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about spirituality and the nature of existence, this quote can illustrate the balance between the physical and the spiritual.
More from Meister Eckhart
All quotes →...Where and when God finds you ready, he must act and overflow into you, just as when the air is clear and pure, the sun must overflow into it and cannot refrain from doing that.
Meister EckhartRead
What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.
Meister EckhartRead
In this breaking-through, I receive that God and I are one. Then I am what I was, and then I neither diminish nor increase, for I am then an immovable cause that moves all things.
Meister EckhartRead
Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God.
Meister EckhartRead
If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man.
Meister EckhartRead
Similar quotes
To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.
Clifford GeertzRead
I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate.... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information.
Richard Francis BurtonRead
I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.
Baruch SpinozaRead
I'm not sure anything makes you an outright good person or bad person - that we're all capable of doing good or bad things. And if you want to know how much good you can do, and how much hurt you can do, just ask somebody you love.
Pete ButtigiegRead
The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name of tolerance and culture, are being rightwing. Not just rightwing. Extreme rightwing. I don't understand how you can be so upset about the Christian right and just ignore the Islamic right. I'm talking about equality.
Ayaan Hirsi AliRead
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
Denis DiderotRead