“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)
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.”
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.”
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."”
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Life of Agesilaus II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author
Pastor Jóhann
Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)
“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
Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Magic Burns
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 book The Appointment
Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm translation, Picador 2002, p. 81
The Appointment (1997)