• heart Love heart

    Three passions have governed my life:
    The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
    And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

    Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
    In the union of love I have seen
    In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
    Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

    With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
    I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
    I have wished to know why the stars shine.

    Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
    But always pity brought me back to earth;
    Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
    Of children in famine, of victims tortured
    And of old people left helpless.
    I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
    And I too suffer.

    This has been my life; I found it worth living.