All our days are marked with unexpected affronts--some disastrous, others less so but the process is wearing and continuous. Attrition rules. Most give way leaving empty spaces where people should be.
Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?
The chain of friendship, however bright, does not stand the attrition of constant close contact.
It is not labor that kills, but the small attritions of daily routine that wear us down.
I have yet to met a liberal who can withstand the attrition of prolonged discussion of the unessentials.
Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there's an element of talent you should probably possess. But if you just stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen.
Through most of its wars, the United States successfully used the attrition approach. It is easier to be proficient at this type of warfare. You need to master only the simplest military skills and possess enormous quantities of arms and munitions.
When I was in the Army, the unit I served in, you could never stop. It was a volunteer unit, and there was a fairly high rate of attrition. The people who stayed through are the people who were either great at it or the people who just didn't know how to stop. And I fell into that second category.
After The Bomb we developed a fairly good system for moving food around and have avoided the kind of massive famines that attract the media. Although of course we've had a fair number of them, particularly in Africa, since The Bomb was written. But we have had a steady level of attrition of malnutrition and malnutrition-related disease. Probably something on the order of 5 to 10 million people starve to death each year, but they're spread out; they're not dramatic news events.
The war of attrition against the Zionist enemy will never cease.
It's a war of attrition. If you have patience and a modicum of faith in yourself your chances are not too bad.
Well, I think we need to have attrition by enforcement. We need to secure our borders. We need to enforce our laws.
Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.
