Need

The hermitage where I used to live.

You don't get what you need by taking what you want. Many times, something less expensive is more comfortable and useful than the thing someone is hawking in the marketplace.

In fact, one does not get a long life without risking it, and making considerable sacrifices. One does not get freedom by taking it from someone else, even if they have committed great wrongs. One does not get children, for instance, without sacrificing considerable freedom over time, safeguarding the infant, and welcoming the child into your life, in spite of the demands made on your time and resources.

Speaking lies is not without risks, and cheating does not ensure power. There is always someone smarter who can see through the lie and alert their friends and loved ones to avoid the trap. Going through life always looking for the advantage is a sure way to eventually lose it all. While it might be regrettable that one did not get some prize thing, low hanging fruit isn't always ripe or palatable. And if the only person you spend any effort pleasing is yourself, you have had your pleasure, and soon enough it fades and withers like a rose.

We have fought two wars that engulfed the whole world and the entire human race, and still, people react to their anger and the transgressions of others with ever-increasing, efficient violence and destruction. Now we can do it in a fraction of the time it used to take.

The people who were killed in the wars we have fought cannot come back to tell you to your face, what it was like to be torn to bits by bullets or to be shot out of the sky, or be blown up in a bombing raid on a ship. They will tell you of the extreme cost, and warn you that to take their lives for granted is not a way forward as a civilization, that leads to fruitful, satisfying life. 

Too many times, too many people have had their lives cut short, and are cutoff from the happiness that for a moment was all too close. Their opportunity to hold their sleeping infant son in their arms was snatched away from them forever, and they will do all in their power to make you recognize the depth of the pain of their sacrifice.

If we take the easy road in life all the time, and consider nothing but out own pleasure and happiness, no one will be happy, and there isn't a drug strong enough to swallow up regret.

If you have the opportunity to make a sacrifice to God, then do so; the opportunity may not be yours again, and the one whose suffering might have been lessened will have to endure without relief.

People have made tremendous sacrifices so you can enjoy a life happiness, but you cannot always be happy, and the most unhappy persons in the world lived selfishly to the extreme, and perhaps dodged the finger of chance, but we will be judged by God and our fellow human beings, because everything will be plain to see. Make it easier on yourself by doing penance, making sacrifices and atoning for your sins, so at least you may be clothed in happiness when your time comes to stand before God.

The most dangerous people on earth do not believe in God or morality or treating others with dignity and equality. You must be the just person who stands before God now as if it were the judgement day, and pleads for others as well as himself.