有声美文-50｜What I Have Lived For 我为何而生

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.

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 of 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.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds away above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought 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 mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

爱情与知识，总是可以把我引领到天堂的境界。可对于人类苦难的同情经常把我带回现实世界。那些痛苦的呼唤经常在我内心深处回响激荡。嗷嗷待哺的孩童，压迫者折磨之下的受害者，给子女造成重负的孤苦无依的老人，以及那充满孤独、贫穷和痛苦的世界，是对人类所应该拥有的生活的无视和嘲弄。我常渴望能尽自己的微薄之力去减轻这不必要的痛苦，但是却无能为力，而我也因此受着痛苦的煎熬。

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

这就是我的生活，我觉得是值得活的。如果有谁再给我一次生活的机会，我将欣然接受这难得的赐予。

声明：除特别注明原创或授权转载文章外，其他文章均源自网络，版权归原作者或平台所有。如涉权属，请后台联系删除或处理版权相关事宜。

猜您喜欢

往期精选▼

合辑 |《英语语法入门》50讲视频汇总

听书 | The Little Prince（小王子）

动画 | 西游记小猪佩奇：第一季 第二季

动画 | 科学小子席德、超级飞侠

语音 | 英音发音工作室 美语教学教程

合辑 | 伊索寓言 · 英文版

合辑 | 40+英文名著 41+英文童话