Broadly speaking, however, Christianity is a universal church originating in a germ that was alien to the society in which it played its part, while Islam originated in a germ that was indigenous.

But anyhow, when you take up your pen you do something devilish pleasing: there is a prospect before you. You are going to develop a germ: I don't know what it is, and I promise you I won't call it creation — but possibly a god is creating through you, and at least you are making believe at creation. Anyhow, it is a sense of mastery and of origin, and you know that when you have done, something will be added to the world, and little destroyed.

A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.

I have long considered the creative impulse to be a visit-a thing of grace, perhaps. Not commanded, owned, so much as awaited, prepared for. A thing, also, of mystery.

It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe — until recently — have been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning...I do not believe that culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole culture goes.

The ability to look deeply is the root of creativity.

Creativity, I believe, is inherent in all of us. We are the progeny of almighty God. God is defined in many ways: all-powerful, all-wise, and all-seeing; everlasting; the lawgiver; the ultimate source of love, beauty, justice, and happiness. Most of all, he is the creator. He created the universe, and those who inhabit it; and, in creating us, he made us in his own image, so that his personality and capacities, however feebly, are reflected in our minds, bodies, and immortal spirits. So we are, by our nature, creators as well.

The Mohamedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own; Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn, but they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of gnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta. [Except for Indo-Saracenic architecture]. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always semi-barbaric.

(The word “genius” comes from the Latin, and originally referred to a guardian spirit that watched over the birth of each person; it later came to refer to the innate qualities that make each person uniquely gifted.)

... it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine

The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome — not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.

The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.

When we compare the pair of Islamic with our pair of Christian societies we see that the Islamic Society which emerged in what we may call the Perso-Turkish or Iranian zone bears a certain resemblance to our Western Society, while the other society, which emerged in what we may call the Arabic zone bears a certain resemblance to Orthodox Christendom. For example, the ghost of the Baghdad Caliphate which was evoked by the Mamluks at Cairo in the thirteenth century of the Christian Era reminds us of the ghost of the Roman Empire which was evoked by Leo the Syrian at Constantinople in the eighth century.

It is possible, I think, to say that... a Christian agriculture [is] formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make. The Creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill.