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 my life for a few hours for 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 wished to know why the stars shine.
And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by
which number holds sway above 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 it 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.