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.

对爱情的渴望，知识的追求，和对人类苦难不可遏制的同情，是支配我一生单纯而强烈的三种感情。这些感情如阵阵飓风，吹拂着我动荡不定的生涯，有时甚至掠过深沉痛苦的海洋，直抵绝望的边缘。

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 thought 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.

我之所以追求爱情，有三方面的原因。首先，爱情给我带来狂喜－这种狂喜如此有力，以致于我常常会为几小时的欢愉而宁愿牺牲生命中的其他一切。其次，爱情可以摆脱孤寂－那是一颗颤慄的心，徘徊在世界的边缘，俯瞰那冰冷死寂、深不可测的深渊。最后，在爱的结合中，我看到了古今圣贤及诗人们所梦想的天堂的神秘缩影。这正是我所追寻的人生境界。虽然它对人生似乎过于美好，高不可攀，可是我最终还是得到了它。

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.

我以同样的热情寻求知识，渴望了解人的心灵，希望知道星星为什么闪闪发光，我试图理解毕达哥拉斯思想的威力，即数字怎样支配万物流转。这方面我也得到了，虽然不多。

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 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.

爱情和知识，尽其可能把我引上了天堂，但是同情心总把我带回尘世。那些痛苦的呼唤经常在我内心深处引起回响。饥饿的儿童，被压迫被折磨的人，孤苦无依子女视为重担的老人，以及充满孤寂、贫穷和痛苦的整个世界，是对人类生活理想的无视和讽刺。我渴望减轻这些不幸，但是我无能为力，而且我自己也深受其害。

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

这就是我的一生，我觉得值得为它而活。如果再给我一次机会，我还会欣然接受这难得的赐予。

（一阵风吹过，想起从前的这段译文。虽然被人译了无数次了，可是，正如孩子，总是自己的好！）。