读书的目的或是为了解决现实问题，或是为了在思想困惑时寻求指导，或是为了在紧张忙碌后的得到片刻放松，它伴随着我们的一生，也帮助着我们一步步的朝着梦想前进。

伯特兰·罗素在他的自传的序言中写下了“我为什么而活着”这样一个简单却复杂，重大却往往被人忽视的问题。读读这边文章或许会给我们些许启示。

我为什么而活着

——伯特兰·罗素

　　对爱情的渴望，对知识的追求，对人类苦难不可遏制的同情，这三种纯洁而无比强烈的感情支配着我的一生。这三种感情就像飓风一样，在深深的苦海上，肆意地把我吹来吹去，吹到濒临绝望的边缘。

　　我寻求爱情，首先是因为爱情给我带来狂喜，它如此强烈以致我经常愿意为了几小时的欢愉而牺牲生命中的其他一切。我寻求爱情，其次是因为爱情解除孤寂一—那是一颗震颤的心，在世界的边缘，俯瞰那冰冷死寂、深不可测的深渊。我寻求爱情，最后是因为在爱情的结合中，我看到圣贤和诗人们所想像的仙境的神秘缩影。这就是我所寻求的，虽然它对人生似乎过于美好，然而最终我还是得到了它。

　　我以同样的热情寻求知识，我希望了解人的心灵。我希望知道星辰为什么闪闪发光，我试图理解毕达哥拉斯的思想威力，即数字支配着万物流转。这方面我获得一些成就，然而并不多。

　　爱情和知识，尽其可能地把我引上云霄，但是同情心总把我带回尘世。痛苦的呼号的回声在我心中回荡，饥饿的儿童，被压迫者折磨的受害者，被儿女视为负担的无助的老人，以及充满孤寂、贫穷和痛苦的整个世界，都是对人类应有生活的嘲讽。我渴望减轻这些不幸，但是我无能为力，而且我自己也深受其害。

　　这就是我的一生，我觉得我活着值得。如果有机会的话，我还乐意再活一次。

What I Have Lived For

-Bertrand Arthur William Russell

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 great 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 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 sway 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 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 this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

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