Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.

The line defines love less as a feeling than as an act of self-donation: to love is to give one’s time, attention, vulnerability, and freedom to another person. “Above all” suggests that affection, desire, or admiration may accompany love, but they are secondary to the ethical choice to place oneself at another’s disposal. In Anouilh’s dramatic universe—often preoccupied with the tension between purity and compromise—this formulation can be read as insisting that love is proved through commitment and sacrifice rather than rhetoric. It also implies risk: giving oneself entails the possibility of loss, disappointment, or betrayal, yet remains the measure of authentic attachment.