“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism.”
More from T. S. Eliot
“There will be time, there will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
“Combing the white hair of the waves blown back, when the wind blows the water white and…”
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”