Theism and atheism bear equally upon an idol. They remain enemies, but fraternal enemies, in a common and impassable idolatry. Of such idolatry Nietz… - Jean-Luc Marion

The idol depends on the gaze that it satisfies, since if the gaze did not desire to satisfy itself in the idol, the idol would have no dignity for it.

The icon and the idol determine two manners of being for beings, not two classes of beings.

To love requires loving without being able or willing to wait any longer to love perfectly, definitively, and forever. Loving demands that the first time already coincide with the last time. The dawn and the evening make one single twilight—the time to love does not last and is played out in an instant, a fragment, a single beat—only one heartbeat, the smallest gap, the articulum, separates us from eternity…. Death frightens the lover no more than the finish line terrorizes the runner: rather, he fears not reaching it quickly enough. Thus we have only one single instant at our disposal, one single atom of an instant, and it is now. Nunc est amandum, we must love now, now or never, now and forever. The instant is only given for that.