three passions have governed my life: the longings for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

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.