我为什么而活着
三种朴素而强烈的感情控制了我的一生：对爱的渴望，对知识的追求以及对人类苦难的难以遏制的同情。这三种感情像飓风一样把我卷到痛苦的深渊，忽东忽西，捉摸不
定，直至吹向绝望的边缘。
我寻求爱。首先，是因为它给我带来莫大的欢喜——这欢喜是如此之大，我宁愿以余下的生命来换取几个小时这种快乐。第二，是因为爱可以使人从孤独中解脱——人处在那可怕的孤独境地就像是胆战心惊地站在世界的边缘眺望冰冷、深不可测而且毫无生气的地狱。最后，是因为在爱的结合中我看到了圣徒和诗人们幻想的天堂的雏形。这就是我所寻求的，虽然这可能是人生难以得到的美好事物，但这就是我最终所找到的东西。
我以同样的激情来追求知识。我想了解人的内心，我想知道星星为什么会发光，而且我也努力理解毕达哥拉斯哲学使数字支配变化的能力。在探索知识方面我只取得了一点成绩，但不是很多。
爱和知识尽可能把我引向天堂，但同情总让我回到人间。痛苦的号叫在我心里回荡。我希望能减少生活中的苦难，但我没有能力，我自己也在受难。
这就是我的一生。我认为我的一生很有意义。如果上天再给我一次重新活过的机会，我会欣然接受。
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 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 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. 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 to me.