READINGS
|
|
|
|
Robert's daughter, Diana, Robert and Amy would like to share a few
short readings. The following readings are gathered from the works of
their best-loved philosopher, Ayn Rand. |
|
|
| [Diana reads:] "Love is the expression of one's
values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you
have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by
one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another." |
|
|
|
|
|
[Robert reads:] "Love is a response to values. It is with a
person's sense of life that one falls in love-with that essential sum,
that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of
a personality.
|
|
One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a
person's character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest
gestures, which create the style of his soul-the individual style of a
unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one's own
sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it
recognizes as one's own basic values in the person of another. It is not a
matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a
matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.
|
|
|
|
|
[Amy reads:] "Love is the expression of philosophy-of a
subconscious philosophical sum-and, perhaps, no other aspect of human
existence needs the conscious power of philosophy quite so
desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and support an
emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason and
emotion, of mind and values, then-and only then-it is the greatest reward
of man's life.
|
|
|
[Amy continues:] "Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most
profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own
happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest
compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person."
|
|
|
|
