The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
Interpretation
Love is more about the feelings it evokes than the person or object we love.
Gore Vidal emphasizes that the essence of love lies not in whom or what we love, but in the powerful emotions and experiences that love creates within us. This perspective highlights the subjective nature of love, suggesting that it is the emotion itself that defines our relationships and enriches our lives, rather than the specific individuals or things that elicit those feelings.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of emotional connections in relationships.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Envy is the central fact of American life.
Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.
In the early days of love sometimes, you will report an ecstatic feeling you have met someone who seems to understand you without you needing to speak.
Love is insistent on its own continuation. Every fraction of a second, someone somewhere falls in love, a former enemy becomes a friend, and a newborn baby is born into the world.
Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my homeβmy only home.
If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.
Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
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