
“4678. The Mountains have brought forth a Mouse.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline http://www.wbenjamin.org/protocol1.html (1927-1934, English translation 1997)
“4678. The Mountains have brought forth a Mouse.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“The mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth.”
Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
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.
“The old proverb was now made good, "the mountain had brought forth a mouse."”
Life of Agesilaus II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Pastor Jóhann
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)
“She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.”
Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3
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.
“A little mouse with clogs on,
Well I declare”
Song A Windmill in Old Amsterdam