I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy ... I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness .... 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.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. ... And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowldege, 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. ... I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life.
Source: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.1, 1967
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