What I have lived for?

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 great 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 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 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 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 this 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.

我为何而生

有三种情感，单纯而强烈，支配着我的一生：对爱情的渴望，对知识的追求，以及对人类苦难难以承受的同情。这些感情如阵阵巨风，挟卷着我在漂泊不定的路途中东飘西荡，飞越苦闷的汪洋大海，直抵绝望的边缘。

我之所以追寻爱情，首先，爱情使人心醉神迷，如此美妙的感觉，以致使我时常为了体验几小时爱的喜悦，而宁愿献出生命中其它一切；其次，爱情可以解除孤独，身历那种可怕孤寂的人的战栗意识，会穿过世界的边缘，直望入冰冷死寂的无底深渊；最后，置身于爱的结合，我在一个神秘缩影中看到了圣贤与诗人们所预想的天堂。这正是我所追寻的，尽管它对于人类的生活或许太过美好，却是我的最终发现。

我也以同样的热情追求知识。我渴望理解人类的心灵，渴望知道星辰为何闪耀，我还试图领略毕达哥拉斯关于哪些数字在变迁之上保持着永恒的智慧。在这一方面，我取得了一点成果，但并不算多。

爱情与知识，尽其可能，引领着我通往天堂；然而怜悯总是把我带回现实。那些痛苦的呼唤在我内心深处回响。饥饿中的孩子，被压迫和折磨的人们，给子女造成重担的无助老人，以及孤独、贫穷和痛苦的整个世界，都是对人类理想生活的嘲讽。我渴望能减少这些不幸，但无能为力，这也是我的痛苦。

这就是我的一生。我发现人生是值得的；而且如果能够再有一次这样的机会，我会欣然接受。