“I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.”

Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline http://www.wbenjamin.org/protocol1.html (1927-1934, English translation 1997)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain." by Walter Benjamin?
Walter Benjamin photo
Walter Benjamin 70
German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892… 1892–1940

Related quotes

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“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)

Horace photo

“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.

Plutarch photo

“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)

Phaedrus photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Jonathan Swift photo

“She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

E.E. Cummings photo

“Dog hates mouse and worships "cat", mouse despises "cat" and hates dog, "cat" hates no one and loves mouse.”

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.

“A little mouse with clogs on,
Well I declare”

Myles Rudge (1926–2007) English songwriter and scriptwriter

Song A Windmill in Old Amsterdam

Herta Müller photo

“The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse.”

Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm translation, Picador 2002, p. 81
The Appointment (1997)

Related topics