Is performance relevant how assign sprites in inspector ?

I have a question regarding for example how sprites are assigned in the inspector . (sorry for my english is a bit basic) If I have many GUI elements that need to reuse the same images. Is it less efficient if I assign to those elements the sprites that have to change directly to that object? Or it is better for example to have an object out of scene or a controller that already has those assigned images and load them from there. I like to put some example to show what im trying to ask

What is better to do it this way? (this a example code of a custom button)

 public Image button;
 public Image icon;
 public Text text;
 //normal
 public sprite buttonNormal;
 public sprite iconNormal;
 //over 
 public sprite buttonOver;
 public sprite iconOver;

or this way ?

 public ImagesGUI images;
 public Image button;
 public Image icon;
 
 void Start()
 {
 button.sprite = images.buttonNormal;
 icon.sprite = images.iconNormal;
 }

Once Unity loads an image does not interfere in memory the times we assign that image in the inspector? I know that in a small project or with few elements should not notice any problem but my game uses many elements of this type and it is necessary to be reusing the same images again and again