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, in a wayward（任性的，不规则的） course,are over a deep ocean of anguish³, reaching to the very verge⁴ of despair.

 

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy-ecstasy（狂喜，入迷） so great that I would often have sacrificed all my 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 rim⁵ 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 wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend⁶ the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux⁷. A 1ittle of this, but not much, I have achieved. 

 

Love and knowledge, so far they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate⁸（回响） in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their pain make a mockery（嘲弄） of what human life should be. I long to alleviate⁹（减轻，缓和） the evil, but I can't, 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. 

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