Three passions have governed my life: the longing
for love, the search into knowledge, and the unbearable __1__
pity for the suffering of mankind.
I have sought of love, first, because it brings
ecstasy--ecstasy so great because I would often have __2__
sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for this
joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--
that terrible loneliness which one shivering consciousness __3__
looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable
lifeless abyss. I have sought it, then, because in the __4__
union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the
prefiguring vision of the heaven where saints and poets __5__
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 passionate I have sought knowledge. I have wished __6__
to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why
the stars shine...A little this, but not much, I have achieved. __7__
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible,
led upward toward the heavens. But it always pity brought __8__
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 mock of what __9__
human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it
worth of living, and would gladly live it again if the chance __10__
were offered me.