Why do I live

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong,have governed my life:

the longing for love, the search for knowledge, andunbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

These passions, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the veryverge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy-ecstasy so great that I would oftenhavesacrificed 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 oneshivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifelessabyss.

I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, theprefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.

This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for