Famous quotes containing the words equilibrium and/or system:
“They who feel cannot keep their minds in the equilibrium of a pair of scales: fear and hope have no equiponderant weights.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)