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 least ? I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway over the flux. 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.
三種簡單卻又無比強烈的激情左右了我的一生：對愛的渴望，對知識的探索和對人類苦難的難以忍受的憐憫。這些激情像狂風，吹來吹去，方向不定，痛苦的`深海，到了絕望的邊緣。
我追求愛情，首先是因爲它帶來狂喜——我常常爲之心醉神迷，犧牲所有的餘生來換取幾個小時這樣的欣喜。下，我尋找愛，還因爲它能減輕孤獨感嗎？看起來可怕的孤獨中，一顆顫抖的意識世界的邊緣而面前是是冰冷，無底的深淵。最後，我尋找愛，還因爲在愛的結合我所看到的，在一個神祕的縮影中看到了聖人和詩人眼裏天堂的願景有想象。這就是我希望，雖然爲人類生活似乎太好了，這是什麼？至少？我發現。
以同樣的激情我探索知識。我希望能夠理解人類的心靈。我希望能夠知道羣星爲何閃爍。我試圖領悟畢達哥拉斯所景仰的數字力量，它支配通量。一點，但不多，我實現了。
愛和知識，只要有可能，通向着天堂。但是憐憫總把我帶回塵世。痛苦呼喊的回聲迴盪在我的內心。，忍飢挨餓的孩子，慘遭壓迫者摧殘的受害者，被兒女們視爲可憎的負擔的無助的老人的兒子，和整個世界的孤獨、貧窮和痛苦的人類的生命是什麼。我渴望減少邪惡，但我不能，我也受到影響。
這就是我的一生。我發現它值得一過，如果有機會，我會很樂意再活給我。
