Year System

Famous quotes containing the words year and/or system:

    A man I praise that once in Tara’s Halls
    Said to the woman on his knees, “Lie still,
    My hundredth year is at an end. I think
    That something is about to happen, I think
    That the adventure of old age begins....”
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    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)