Three Passions I Have Lived for

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.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.  
[00:47.70]I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness  
[00:52.19]—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness  
[00:57.46]looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.  
[01:04.12]I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen,  
[01:10.02]in a mystic miniature,  
[01:11.89]the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.  
[01:17.90]This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life,  
[01:23.92]this is what—at last—I have found.  
[01:28.08]With equal passion I have sought knowledge.  
[01:32.12]I have wished to understand the hearts of men.  
[01:36.06]I have wished to know why the stars shine ...