> great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil
> Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.
> If you see a great master, you will always find that he used what was good in his predecessors, and that it was this which made him great.
