常常思索生活的你，是不是想過(guò)為什么而生呢？對(duì)愛(ài)情的渴望，對(duì)常識(shí)的追求，對(duì)人類苦難的同情是支配我一生的三種單純而強(qiáng)烈的感情。假如有來(lái)生，我將第三欣然同意這難得的賜予

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing^{1 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, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish4, reaching to the very verge5 of despair.}

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy^{6 - 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 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^{8 the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux9. 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^{10 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 alleviate11 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.