Quotes from Geoffrey Wood

If they ever envision Goodness as a thing that exists outside them, some real thing they've been called to participate in by their actions, well then, we're headed right back toward The Virtues.

Denial makes it easier to keep an addiction progressing smoothly along and, being a lie, it's just better form.

With addiction, a client's fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana —the fear of Fear itself.

If we must tempt to Pleasure, how do we tempt to the least amount of Pleasure? Or better yet, tempt them to its opposite? But how to tempt them to pain.

They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.

We've spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that's precisely how we did it —by making it lower case.

Remember, this type doesn't really believe He'll forgive them, by repenting they are trying to earn what they do not think, in any case, He will pay.

Selling a new lie is easy, but not so with un-teaching an old truth.

Truth, with a capital T, was swapped for Fact with a capital F, then both lower-cased —facts the new trues.

Still, despite all our noise, this universe hinges on a melody, that's the dismal truth of it. Oh, we can propagandize all we wish, it doesn't change the fabric of things. This universe was not made for the fallen, only the redeemed.

In general, Americans would walk a mile uphill in the rain to avoid pain, unless the walk could be shorter and level and the day sunny, which they'd prefer.

The trick here is, while the actual pleasure begins to recede and blur, we simultaneously bring the imagined pleasure more fully into focus. And when we do, even the memory of the pleasure becomes more and more heightened and imagined, thus anticipation is increased. This kind of anticipation is the spiritual equivalent of a Cheeto and we want them to eat the whole bag.

As a rule, Americans are big on that word "choice" and some souls can be captured simply by dangling before the creature a continual, lifelong supply of things from which to choose.

Turning an experience about to observe it, results in a lessening of the experience directly proportional to the amount of observation. To think about it is, to some degree, to stop the pleasure, to stop the experience, to step outside it.

And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they've lost, forever.

Remember, philosophically speaking, Americans are mongrels —practical materialists but with a dreamy streak of divine approval.

Indeed, if their wristbands asked them the question: "What-Would-Jesus-Buy"—well now, that could very well revolutionize the Christian church in America.

Faith is an act whereby they learn their God.

And I'm glad to see that all three clients are male. Not that the females can't be corrupted, I've just always found the males more amenable to temptation. The males have always had all the power, so that does much to explain it. As they say: Easy pickings.

First of all, don't ever let them try to define that word "happiness" for themselves. They can't and that's precisely what we never want them to realize. Keep it a vague bright mist hovering about their heads. Locate it securely at the end of implausible rainbows. Hide it snugly in some corner of their thoughts they rarely visit.

They want explanation, not faith; God gives them faith as the explanation.

Never let them try out this gratitude, for they would immediately discover that it supplies the first and most important component to happiness: Contentment.

With Truth, Reason, and Morality off the board, we then capture their last Rook —that prissy little virtue, Temperance— for she depends on those other three for her beauty and was thus left wholly undefended.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happy hour, the long weekend, the all-inclusive island resort, the sunny beach vacation. Happiness is somewhere else, someplace with boat drinks, some secret, distant state of bliss which if they were given would bore them in minutes.