If you have a religion it must be cosmic.

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'

As long as you are proud, you cannot know God.

It is a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.

Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is

And there's one thing about this underground work, we shan't get any rain.

When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing tastes, interests and capacity of his audience. These no less than the language , the marble, the paint, are part of his aw material.; to be used, tamed, sublimated, not ignored or defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius, it is laziness and incompetence.