Three Passions I have Lived For
by Bertrand Russell(貝特蘭·羅素)
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.
吾生三愿,純樸卻激越:一曰渴望愛情,二曰求索知識,三曰悲憫吾類之無盡苦難。此三愿,如疾風,迫吾無助飄零于苦水深海之上,直達絕望之彼岸。
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 for 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.
吾求愛,蓋因其賜吾狂喜——狂喜之劇足令吾舍此生而享其片刻;吾求愛,亦因其可驅寂寞之感,吾人每生寂寞之情輒兢兢俯視天地之緣,而見絕望之無底深淵;吾求愛還因若得愛,即可窺視圣哲詩人所見之神秘天國。此吾生之所求,雖慮其之至美而恐終不為凡人所得,亦可謂吾之所得也。