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What I Have Lived For

by Bertrand Russell

The essay was written by Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest mathematicians, philosophers, and writers of the 20th century. He was born in 1872 into a rich and noble British family. He wrote Principia Mathematica, A History of Western Philosophy, and many other works. Russell won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950. In 1958 Lord Russell began the first of his many campaigns for nuclear disarmament. He died in 1970 at the age of 98.

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.

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 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.

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

 

 

Questions:

 

1. What is the structure of the essay?

 

2. Study the introductory paragraph:

 

- What is the writer’s main message in this essay?

- Find the thesis statement of the essay.

- What kind of expectations does this paragraph set for the reader?

- Underline the ideas A, B, C. How are they announced?

 

3. Study the second paragraph:

- What is the main idea?

- What are the supportive sentences?

- What connectors did the author use? Why?

- What is the concluding sentence?



- What idea does it express?

 

4. Study the third paragraph:

- What is the main idea?

- What are the supportive sentences?

- What connectors did the author use? Why?

- What is the concluding sentence?



- What idea does it express?

 

5. Study the fourth paragraph:

- What is the main idea?

- What are the supportive sentences?

- What connectors did the author use? Why?

- What is the concluding sentence?



- What idea does it express?

 

6. Study the conclusion:

- What kind of conclusion is it?

- What does the author want to tell us?

- What connectors are used?

 


Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1164


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