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What is truth? Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go.
Meister Eckhart the preacher also said this: There never was a struggle or a battle which required greater valor than that in which a man forgets or denies himself.
I have often said that a person who wishes to begin a good life should be like a man who draws a circle. Let him get the center in the right place and keep it so and the circumference will be good. In other words, let a man first learn to fix his heart on God, and then his good deeds will have virtue; but if a man’s heart is unsteady, even the great things he does will be of small advantage.
According to Meister Eckhart, God is not only the father of all good things, but he is the mother of all things as well. He is father, for he is cause of all things and their creator. He is the mother of all things as well, for when creatures have gotten their being from him he still stays with creatures to keep them in being. If God did not remain with creatures after they had started their own life, they would most speedily fall out of being. Falling from God means falling from being into nothingness. It is not so with other causes; they can with safety quit the things they cause when these things have gotten being of their own. When the house exists, its builder can depart, for it is not the builder alone that makes the house; the materials of it he draws from nature. But God provides the creature with the whole of what it is, with form as well as matter, so he is bound to stay with it, or it will promptly drop out of existence.
Whoever has three things is beloved of God: The first is riddance of possessions; the second, of friends; and the third is riddance of self.
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