Sometimes, on days of perfect and exact light,
When things are as real as they can possibly be,
I slowly ask myself
Why I even bother to attribute
Beauty to things.

Does a flower really have beauty?
Does a fruit really have beauty?'
No: they have only color and form
And existence.
Beauty is the name of something that doesn’t exist
But that I give to things in exchange for the pleasure they
give me.
It means nothing.
So why do I say about things: they’re beautiful?

[...]

Hillside shepherd, so far away from me with your sheep,
Is the happiness you seem to have your happiness or mine?
Does the peace I feel when I see you belong to you or to me?
No, shepherd, neither to you nor to me.
It belongs only to peace and happiness.
You don’t have it, because you don’t know you have it,
And I don’t have it, because I know I do.
It exists on its own, and falls on us like the sun,
Which hits you on the back and warms you up, while you
indifferently think about something else,
And it hits me in the face and dazzles my eyes,
and I think only about the sun.

Everything, except boredom, bores me.

We’ve always had the confident vision
That other beings, angels or gods,
Reign above us
And move us to act.
Just as in the fields our actions
On the cattle, which they don’t understand,
Coerce and compel them
Without them knowing why,
So too our human will and mind
Are the hands by which others lead us
To wherever they want us
To desire to go.

All I ask the gods to grant me
is that I ask them for nothing.
Good luck is a yoke
And to be happy oppresses,
For it’s an emotional state.
I want to raise my not easy nor uneasy,
Purely calm being above the plane
Where men rejoice or grieve.