
“5204. To make a Mountain of a Mole-hill.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Referring to the recent arrest of Conservative MP w:Damian Green in connection with an investigation about him receiving confidential information from a civil servant at the Home Office who was formerly a Conservative Party candidate.
To which Black Rod quipped, I shall miss you, Dennis., receiving laughter from other MPs. The 2008 State Opening of Parliament was Michael Willcocks' last as Black Rod.
2000s
“5204. To make a Mountain of a Mole-hill.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.”
Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.
Book III, ode iv, line 65
Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)
“The flower and fruit of love are mine
The ant, the fieldmouse and the mole”
"The Boat"
Selected Poems (1962)
Hallmark Channel's This Morning with Naomi Judd (January 29, 2006)
2007, 2008
“Who stunned the dirt into noise?
Ask the mole, he knows.”
"The Lost Son," ll. 66-70
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: Who stunned the dirt into noise?
Ask the mole, he knows.
I feel the slime of a wet nest.
Beware Mother Mildew.
Nibble again, fish nerves.
“All but blind
In his chambered hole
Gropes for worms
The four-clawed Mole.”
All But Blind.
“The taste of mole was the most repulsive I knew until I tasted a bluebottle”
fly
As quoted in The Violinist's Thumb 2012 by Sam Kean, p. 204
Misattributed
Source: This quote, frequently attributed to Aquinas, is actually a paraphrase of a passage (itself an elaborate paraphrase of Augustine) by Ptolemy of Lucca in his continuation of an unfinished work by Aquinas. The passage from Ptolemy reads: "Thus, Augustine says that a whore acts in the world as the bilge in a ship or the sewer in a palace: 'Remove the sewer, and you will fill the palace with a stench.' Similarly, concerning the bilge, he says: 'Take away whores from the world, and you will fill it with sodomy.'" (Ptolemy of Lucca and Thomas Aquinas, On the Government of Rulers, trans. James M. Blythe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, 4. 14. 6). What Augustine actually wrote (in De ordine, 2. 4. 12) was simply: "Remove prostitutes from human affairs and you will unsettle everything on account of lusts." Only Book 1 and the first four chapters of Book 2 of On the Government of Rulers (De Regimine Principum) are by Aquinas. The rest of the work was written by Ptolemy. (It even mentions the coronation of Albert I of Hapsburg, an event that occurred in 1298, twenty-four years after Aquinas's death.) The quote comes from Book 4, which was definitely not written by Aquinas.