“The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted to their predecessors or to their contemporaries.”

Rejecting the idea that artistic greatness requires complete independence from earlier writers · Essay, Robert Herrick, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Literature
• Poetry
• Tradition

“The humor and imagination which are diffused through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in individual Englishmen.”

Suggesting that exceptional humour and imagination can emerge vividly from an apparently sober culture · Ponkapog Papers, Leaves from a Note Book (1903)

• Culture
• Humour
• Imagination

“What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.”

Recognising that standards of acceptable language continually change · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Change
• Culture
• Language