If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.
Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility less for his successors.
The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.