Irving Singer > Quotes

“some of the happiest moments of my life have occurred just before I fall asleep or wake up, when I linger in that twilight world between consciousness and unconsciousness, in a state of somnolent repose but also savoring the vital goodness of remaining this close to the vegetative in myself”
― Irving Singer, The Harmony of Nature and Spirit

“In living this way, we discover new opportunities for comfort and enjoyment. Where the younger person may have tossed and turned throughout a sleepless night, the older man or woman can possibly feel the pleasure that comes from lying on a good mattress, resting one's weary bones and overcharged intellect, whether or not one sleeps throughout the hours of darkness.”
― Irving Singer, The Harmony of Nature and Spirit

“Santayana speaks of men and women being propelled toward one another by material forces that control their appetites, their desires, their sexual inclinations. He then goes on to show how different all this is once love intervenes. In an imaginative act the lover uses the beloved as a reminder of some ideal object that she approximates. His love expresses a dual devotion: first to the ideal object, itself an effect of man's imagination; and second to the beloved, whom he appreciates as the partial embodiment of beauty or goodness.”
― Irving Singer, The Nature of Love: Plato to Luther