Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have dominated my life: the longing for love, the pursuit of knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like strong winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the 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 of this joy. I have sought love, 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. Finally, I have sought love, because in the union of love, I have seen the mystic miniature of the heaven imagined by saints and poets. This is what I sought, and although it seems too good for life, this is what I finally found.

I seek knowledge with the same enthusiasm. I hope to understand the human mind. I want to know why the stars shine. I tried to understand the Pythagorean power, through which numbers dominate change. I have done this, but not much.

Love and knowledge, whenever possible, will lead us to heaven. But pity always brings me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain echoed in my heart. Hungry children, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people who become the burden of their sons, and the loneliness, poverty and pain of the whole world are all a mockery of human life. I am eager to alleviate this evil, but there is nothing I can do, and I am suffering.

This is my life. I found it worth living, and I would live it again if I were given another chance.