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.
三种简单却又无比强烈的激情左右了我的一生：对爱的渴望，对知识的探索和对人类苦难的难以忍受的怜悯。这些激情像狂风，吹来吹去，方向不定，痛苦的`深海，到了绝望的边缘。
我追求爱情，首先是因为它带来狂喜——我常常为之心醉神迷，牺牲所有的余生来换取几个小时这样的欣喜。下，我寻找爱，还因为它能减轻孤独感吗？看起来可怕的孤独中，一颗颤抖的意识世界的边缘而面前是是冰冷，无底的深渊。最后，我寻找爱，还因为在爱的结合我所看到的，在一个神秘的缩影中看到了圣人和诗人眼里天堂的愿景有想象。这就是我希望，虽然为人类生活似乎太好了，这是什么？至少？我发现。
以同样的激情我探索知识。我希望能够理解人类的心灵。我希望能够知道群星为何闪烁。我试图领悟毕达哥拉斯所景仰的数字力量，它支配通量。一点，但不多，我实现了。
爱和知识，只要有可能，通向着天堂。但是怜悯总把我带回尘世。痛苦呼喊的回声回荡在我的内心。，忍饥挨饿的孩子，惨遭压迫者摧残的受害者，被儿女们视为可憎的负担的无助的老人的儿子，和整个世界的孤独、贫穷和痛苦的人类的生命是什么。我渴望减少邪恶，但我不能，我也受到影响。
这就是我的一生。我发现它值得一过，如果有机会，我会很乐意再活给我。
