Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy –ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what- at last- I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flu. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

三种激情操控着我的人生，简单却格外强烈：对爱的渴求，对知识的求索和对人类痛苦遭遇的难以抑制的同情。这些激情，就像飓风，将我吹得来回飘忽，以一种无序的方式，越过痛苦的深渊，抵达绝望的边缘。

最初，我追寻爱情，因为它带来痴狂——如此地着迷以至于我宁愿常常牺牲掉余生以换取几个小时的此般欢愉。继而，我追寻它，因为它宽慰孤独——那可怕的孤独，犹如一个人颤抖的意识越过世界的边缘去窥探冰冷深不可测的、毫无生气的深渊。最终，我追寻它，因为在爱的结合中，我看见了诗人和圣人想象的天堂的预兆，那是一个神秘的缩影。

我求索知识，以同等的热情。我一直以来期望懂得人心。我努力去理解毕达哥拉斯学派的奥秘，它由数字控制并影响而非流感。我获得了些许，并非很多。

爱和知识，它们存在到现在为止，引领着通向天堂的路。但是同情心时常将我带回人间。痛苦的呐喊的回声在我的心房回荡。饥荒中的孩子，被压迫者折磨的受难百姓，带给他们儿孙累赘的无助老人，以及这充斥全世界的孤独，贫穷和痛苦对人类本该的生活做出了无情嘲弄。我渴望减轻人们的罪恶，但是我不能，我同样煎熬着。

这一直是我的人生。我发现它值得存在，如果能给我一个机会重新活过，我会欣然接受。