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1 " What happiness?Here we have a kind of what they call a multiple choice question.Like any difficult question, let's go through elimination.Happiness is not really about having a good job, but obviously it's not about getting available in the market.It's not in the new car, but it's not about relying on public transport either.She is not in the college diploma, but not is in not having the opportunity to study.It is not in being better than others in some activity, but neither is it in not being good at anything.It is not in the accumulation of capital, but it is not in dependence on the state.In fact, happiness is not even happiness.Happiness is moment. Being with the one you love. Conquer what you want. But pass. Not everything you have seems to be exactly what you wanted. Nothing is eternal. Do you see grace in the eternal?Grace, that all things tend to lose after some time. Our standard of living is transformed.We note then that the happiness that everyone asks themselves is what they call " the meaning of life," that which flows a good way of living.The good way to live that may or may not be eternal. But in the long run it is that state of mind that the glass is half full. It is the result of the counterpart of the onus of the fascinating existential singularity.The question then is not what it is, but how it is. How to achieve.It's part of something. Have recognition. Get answers. All in all. To make things part of you. To recognize what you have. To valuing each achievement. It is action and reaction. It's a verb.Understand that we come into the world in the same way we will leave it: without being able to carry anything, but to leave. In this moment, as well as the good way of living, we transform doubt.Now the question is " what has it left" ? What is your contribution to the world?We have a beginning: be guided by what you can do to make the world better than you have found. We have a beginning ... the rest ... it's up to you. "
2 " Rising demand for oil exposed Europe, and later America, to oil shocks - serious interruptions in supply. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, an oil shock creats ripples, or effects, felt everywhere.Oil shocks have two causes. The first is natural, because existing oil fields may not yield enough to satisfy demand. Scarcity results in higher prices for oil products, reducing our standard of living. Natural scarcity was not a problem in the world's major producing areas until recently.The second cause of oil shocks is political. Political shocks happen when governments of oil-producing countries reduce or halt supply to gain the upper hand in dealings with other governments. This is the case in the Middle East, where oil has often mixed with politics, religion, and blood. The reasons for this have shaped the history of recent times. "
― Albert Marrin
3 " Its better to Convince by words rather than your Hands. We should not degrade our Standard for others. - Merlin Thomas "
4 " We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the " real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for " our standard of living." They will call themselves " practical men" and " hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as " part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the " realism" of millions of modern adults.There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small group of us, a great deal more work than we have yet been able to do. How could we divorce ourselves completely and yet responsibly from the technologies and powers that are destroying our planet? The answer is not yet thinkable, and it will not be thinkable for some time -- even though there are now groups and families and persons everywhere in the country who have begun the labor of thinking it.And so we are by no means divided, or readily divisible, into environmental saints and sinners. But there are legitimate distinctions that need to be made. These are distinctions of degree and of consciousness. Some people are less destructive than others, and some are more conscious of their destructiveness than others. For some, their involvement in pollution, soil depletion, strip-mining, deforestation, industrial and commercial waste is simply a " practical" compromise, a necessary " reality," the price of modern comfort and convenience. For others, this list of involvements is an agenda for thought and work that will produce remedies.People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society. They have first observed the tendency of modern organizations to perform in opposition to their stated purposes. They have seen governments that exploit and oppress the people they are sworn to serve and protect, medical procedures that produce ill health, schools that preserve ignorance, methods of transportation that, as Ivan Illich says, have 'created more distances than they... bridge.' And they have seen that these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character. This realization has become the typical moral crisis of our time. Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live. "
5 " The truth is, new furniture or a better house will never really satisfy - they will just set new, higher standards for what is acceptable to us for our comfort and contentment. When you take care of what you have and find joy right where you are, you set the right tone and expectations for contentment in all circumstances moving forward. Whether things get better or worse, our standard will be to love what we have and be grateful for it (even when we might not like it). "
― Melissa Michaels
6 " How different our standard is from Christ's. We ask how much a man gives. Christ asks how much he keeps. "
― Andrew Murray
7 " Too often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving. (Look again at 2 Corinthians 8:14 and 9:11). "
― Randy Alcorn , Money, Possessions and Eternity