Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

W. Macneile Dixon, fully William Macneile Dixon

India-born British Author and English and Literature Professor, President of the University Philosophical Society

"The astonishing thing about him [man] is his range of vision; his gaze into the infinite distance; his lonely passion for ideas and ideals, far removed from his material surroundings and animal activities, and in no way suggested by them, yet for which, such is his affection, he is willing to endure toils and privations, to sacrifice pleasures, to disdain griefs and frustrations. The inner truth is that every man is himself a creator, by birth and nature, an artist, an architect and fashioner of worlds."

"Our desires attract supporting reasons as a magnet the iron filings."

"To strip the human being, for example, of all his attributes save his logical or calculating powers is an unwarrantable mutilation. Nature made him what he is. You cannot pick and choose. Nature is asserting herself in him, and you must take account not of one or two, but of all her assertions."

"The astonishing thing about the human being is not so much his intellect and bodily structure, profoundly mysterious as they are. The astonishing and least comprehensible thing about him is his range of vision; his gaze into the infinite distance; his lonely passion for ideas and ideals."

"All Finite things have their roots in the infinite, and if you wish to understand life at all, you cannot tear out it's context. And that context, astounding even to bodily eyes is the heaven of stars and the incredible procession of the great galaxies. Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence Science's view of intelligence itself has begun to change. Historically, "intelligence" has been defined simply as mental capacity. Some have even proposed that it is, therefore, fixed, finite, and genetically predetermined. Now it appears intelligence has other dimensions as well, physiologically and emotionally. We all have considerably more intelligence than we thought; we just have not learned to bring our capacity for intelligence into coherence."

"Men ardently pursue truth, assuming it will be angels' bread when found."

"There is more than a morsel of truth in the saying, "He who hates vice hates mankind.""

"Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything."

"Ideas, like individuals, live and die. They flourish, according to their nature, in one soil or climate and droop in another. They are the vegetation of the mental world."

"The facts of the present won't sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion."

"To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best."

"To understand any living thing, you must, so to say, creep within and feel the beating of its heart."