A resilient culture has a certain amount of resistance embedded in it. Not so much to capsize it, but enough so that it doesn't atrophy.
If you only exercise your soloist muscles, the other muscles quickly atrophy.
It would indeed be a sad misfortune if man were released from the necessity of work and struggle, for it is a well-known fact that organs which do not function atrophy; and according to the old saying, 'Idleness is the devil's workshop.'
Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.
Creative writing and shooting are muscles that atrophy. But when you work them, you become a self-generator who can branch out.
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
Just because you get to a certain number doesn't mean you have to roll up into a ball and wait for the grim reaper. We were put on this earth to do something! If you stop using your brain, at any age, it is going to stop working. It's like if you stop using your hand, it will atrophy. I think doing nothing is a curse.
So many older people, they just sit around all day long and they don't get any exercise. Their muscles atrophy, and they lose their strength, their energy and vitality by inactivity.
Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used.
