“4678. The Mountains have brought forth a Mouse.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“The mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth.”
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 139. Horace is hereby poking fun at heroic labours producing meager results; his line is also an allusion to one of Æsop's fables, The Mountain in Labour. The title to Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing expresses a similar sentiment.
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Horace92
Roman lyric poet -65–-8 BCRelated quotes
“The old proverb was now made good, "the mountain had brought forth a mouse."”
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Life of Agesilaus II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.”
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)
Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline http://www.wbenjamin.org/protocol1.html (1927-1934, English translation 1997)
E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet
A Foreword to Krazy (1946)
Context: A humbly poetic, gently clownlike, supremely innocent, and illimitably affectionate creature (slightly resembling a child's drawing of a cat, but gifted with the secret grace and obvious clumsiness of a penguin on terra firma) who is never so happy as when egoist-mouse, thwarting altruist-dog, hits her in the head with a brick. Dog hates mouse and worships "cat", mouse despises "cat" and hates dog, "cat" hates no one and loves mouse.
“The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.”
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet
"The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), lines 298-299. Compare: "I hold a mouses wit not worth a leke, That hath but on hole for to sterten to", Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Wif of Bathes Prologue", line 6154; "The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken", George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum.
Helen Suzman (1917–2009) South African politician
As quoted in "A lone voice has been silenced" https://web.archive.org/web/20160913173321/http://hsf.org.za/siteworkspace/the-star-pg-11.pdf (2 January 2009), by Peter Sullivan, The Star
John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom
Context: Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Thy beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:
Let us enter into the heart of the thicket. ~ 36