Attrition Quotes

“You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.”

“You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.”

“You might say that S. has only himself to blame, that it is entirely his choice to fight this fight, to live a life of vigilant somnolence or somnolent vigilantism, to allow himself to be satisfied with Sola in the margins of his manuscripts instead of in his arms, and you might be right. But you ought to understand, too, that there's an attrition that takes place inside, one in which options and choices and even desires are ground ever smaller until finally their existence can no longer be confirmed by observation or weight or displacement but only by faith. Until desire is a ghost.”

“Why don't you just do it, then?" Racath hissed. "Just kill me. I dare you."Now, I assume you know what this is. You've seen this before in other stories - the part where the disgruntled villain stands over the hero. He is triumphant, the hero now at his mercy. But when commanded to slay him, he hesitates. He lowers his sword. And he says: "I cannot."If you are to take away but one thing from the words I have spoken, let it be this: there is a world of difference between "I Cannot" and "I will not". "I cannot" is a surrender. It implies a lack of options. Someone who says such a thing does so only because they have no other choice. They do not WISH to relent - in fact, they usually want to obey their mandate and destroy the hero at their feet. But they cannot, because the guilt is too unbearable. But that does not make him a better man; all that a man who says "I cannot" has done, is given in to the compulsion to repent.Allow me to make myself perfectly clear - I HAD other options. Easy options. Simple options. I could have killed Racath Thanjel that day. I could have killed him and all the others, too. I could have left them dead and bloody on that grassy hill, and gone trotting back to the Imperator's lap. I could have shrugged off the attrition that had dogged my every step, thought better of my disenssion, given up on all hope of absolution and accepted my damnation. And I could have spent the rest of eternity destroying God's green earth at Lavethion's side.I could have. It would have been so easy. So simple. So wrong. And I didn't want to.And so I took a sickened step away. Stabbed Osveta into the grass. Shook my head. And said: "I won't.”

“We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning.”

“It's a war of attrition. If you have patience and a modicum of faith in yourself your chances are not too bad.”

“The chain of friendship however bright does not stand the attrition of constant close contact.”

“We must take the long view—every defeat is a victory in a war of attrition.”

“For the achiever the battle with critics is a slow war of attrition. Let time do the dirty work for you.”

“But I don't want massive layoffs of anyone - public or private. We are planning on shrinking government through attrition and reform, not through random pink slips.”

“Provided there is a church which proclaims the mutual humanity and deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, evil will never be able to bring it to the point of attrition.”