英文美文欣赏：What I Have Lived for我为何而生

考研英语来源：文都教育 2017-07-07　

Three passions, simple but overwhelminglystrong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearablepity 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.

对爱情的渴望，对知识的探求和对人类苦难不可遏制的同情，是支配我一生的单纯而难以抗拒的三种情感。这些情感如阵阵飓风,随意地把我吹得飘来荡去，有时吹过深沉痛苦的海洋，直抵绝望的边缘。

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 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.

我曾经追求过爱情，首先是因为爱情可以给我带来狂喜，这种狂喜竟如此强烈，以至于我常常会为了体验几小时爱的欢娱，而宁愿牺牲生命中的其他一切。我曾经追求过爱情，其次是因为爱情可以摆脱孤寂——置身于那可怕的孤独之中，那令人战栗的感觉，有时会掠过世界的边缘，把人带到寒气袭人且没有生命的无底深渊。我曾经追求过爱情，还因为在爱的结合中，我看到了古今圣贤以及诗人们梦想中天堂的神秘缩影。这也正是我所追寻的人生境界。虽然它对一般的人类生活也许太美好了，但这正是我透过爱情最终所找到的。

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.

我曾以同样的感情追求知识。我一直渴望去了解人类的心灵，也渴望知道星星为什么会发光，同时我还想理解毕达哥拉斯的力量，通过它的力量，数驾驭了万物的变化。我学到了一点点知识，但仅是皮毛而已。

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, victimstortured 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。