Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing¹ for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable² pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither³（到处） , in a wayward（任性的，不规则的） course, ove r a deep ocean of anguish⁴, reaching to the very verge⁵ of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy⁶（狂喜，入迷） –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 rim⁷ of the world into the cold unfathomable（深不可测的） 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 apprehend⁸（理解） 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 reverberate⁹（回想，反响） 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 alleviate¹⁰ 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.