Quotes & Sayings About Mice

Do you like to read?" I asked, pointing at my little shelf.
Moses eyed my books. "Yes."
His answer surprised me. Maybe it was his reputation as a gang banging delinquent. Maybe it was because of the way he looked. But he didn't seem like the type who enjoyed sitting quietly with a book.
"What's your favorite book?" I sounded suspicious and his eyes tightened.
"I like Catcher in the Rye. The Outsiders, 1984, Of Mice and Men, Dune, Starship Troopers, Lord of the Rings. Anything by Tom Clancy or JK Rowling."
He said JK Rowling quickly, like he didn't want to admit to being a Potter fan. But I was stunned. — Amy Harmon

Fat lot of good we are," said Ralph. "Three blind mice. — William Golding

It will be awesome, if the people had the chance all stuff which surround them to see them as larger as possible so to be differences like you are a mice or something like this.... - I'm sure that people will see stuff which as normal size everything they won't see! — Deyth Banger

Many spend their time berating practitioners for not applying their method. We all need to disseminate our ideas, but most of our time should be spent applying and improving our methods, not selling them. The best way to sell a mouse trap is to display some trapped mice. — David Parnas

True evil - conscious, calculating evil - does not seek to destroy life, but rather encourage it. True evil - malicious in every action - cheers life on. True evil - defiled in every pursuit - is not, as Max Andrews proposes, maximally selfish, rather full of restraint and accommodating in every way to the needs of men, mice, mushrooms, and microbes. True evil - debased in every motion - promotes, defends, and even admires life in its struggle to persist and self-adorn. True evil - known only to itself - urges life to grow more complex, more bold, more adventurous and more expressive, for only then is it at its most vulnerable, and when it is at its most vulnerable it is pregnant with possibility. Nothing, after all, can be truly lost or truly broken before it is first acquired, held to the bosom, adored, and cherished. — John Zande

Acceding to researchers in the field of epigenetics, traumatic experiences produce fearful memories that are passed to future generations. A study carried out on mice in 2013 found that they could produce offspring with an aversion to actions and events associated with their parents' negative experiences. Nature and nurture turn out to be interrelated. — Frank Schaeffer

David Eagleman describes how you can take a male stickleback fish and have a female fish trespass on its territory. The male gets confused, because it wants to mate with the female, but it also wants to defend its territory. As a result, the male stickleback fish will simultaneously attack the female while initiating courtship behavior. The male is driven into a frenzy, trying to woo and kill the female at the same time. This works for mice as well. Put an electrode in front of a piece of cheese. If the mouse gets too close, the electrode will shock it. One feedback loop tells the mouse to eat the cheese, but another one tells the mouse to stay away and avoid being shocked. By adjusting the location of the electrode, you can get the mouse to oscillate, torn between two conflicting feedback loops. — Michio Kaku

Negativland through rose colored glasses. If 'mice are from Mars,' Greek Buck is from Venus. — Terre Thaemlitz

Well, that boy's voice," my grandmother told me, "that boy's voice could bring those mice back to life!" And it occurs to me now that Owen's voice was the voice of all those murdered mice, coming back to life - with a vengeance. — John Irving

C. Every morning after that, the mice and the Littlepeople dressed in their running gear and headed over to Cheese Station C. It wasn't long before they each established their own routine. Sniff and Scurry continued to wake early every day and race through the Maze, always following the same route. When they arrived at their destination, the mice took off their running shoes, tied them together and hung them around their necks-so they could get to them quickly whenever they needed them again. Then they enjoyed the cheese. In the beginning Hem and Haw also raced toward Cheese Station C every morning to enjoy the tasty new morsels that awaited them. But after a while, a different routine set in for the Littlepeople. Hem and Haw awoke each day a little later, dressed a little slower, and walked to Cheese Station C. After all, they knew where the Cheese was — Spencer Johnson

If you want to live where people are not afraid of mice, you must give up living in palaces. — E. Lockhart

That cat doesn't have a lick of sense,' I said, sighing.
Well, honey, he's not right in the head,' Dad said, flipping his cigarette into the front yard.
I glared at him. 'And just what do you mean by that?'
Dad counted on his fingers. 'He's cross-eyed; he jumps out of trees after birds and then doesn't land on his feet; he sleeps with his head smashed up against the wall, and the tip of his tail is crooked.'
Oh yeah? Well, how about this: he once got locked in a basement by evil Petey Scroggs in the middle of January and survived on snow and little frozen mice. When I'm cold at night he sleeps right on my face. Of that whole litter of kittens he came out of he's the only one left. One of his brothers didn't even have a butthole.'
I stand corrected. PeeDink is a survivor. — Haven Kimmel

Vishous: " ... we both would slaughter anything that so much as startled you."
Jane: "I'm scared of mice and spiders. But you don't need to use that gun on your hip to blow a hole in a wall if I ran into one, okay? Havaheart traps and rolled newspapers work just as well. Plus, you don't need a Sheetrock patch and plaster job afterward. I'm just saying. — J.R. Ward

It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice. — Deng Xiaoping

Once the interlude was over and I was released, I fled the room and, taking the stairs two at a time, found refuge in a dank corner of the basement filled with potatoes and mice. I stayed there until dinner, doing my best to stop crying by staring at the glowing face of my father's wristwatch. — Allen Kurzweil

All this is only for the mice and myself to admire! — Catherine The Great

Since Dominic's been sleeping with me, the mice have been trying various labels on him, looking for one that fits. My personal favorite was the week they spent calling him the God of Absolutely Never Smiling, No, Not Ever. — Seanan McGuire

Some things we have to hide from science, waiting for the day when people will be ready to deal with the idea of talking mice or fish with fur. Other things science hides from itself, because no one really wants the night to be dark and filled with monsters. That era has passed. — Seanan McGuire

He will kill mice and he will be kind to babies ... but when the moon gets up and the night comes, he is the Cat that Walks by Himself. — Rudyard Kipling

Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels. — Mel Brooks

But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Shopping for clothes is a Boyfriend Thing. You stand around and look blankly at a bunch of pieces of fabric and you look at the price tags and you wonder how something that'd barely cover your right nut can cost the price of a kidney and you watch the shop assistants check you out and wonder what you're doing with her because she's cute and you're kind of funny-looking and she tries clothes on and you look at her ass in a dozen different items that all look exactly the same and let's face it you're just looking at her ass anyway and it all blurs together and then someone sticks a vacuum cleaner in your wallet and vacuums out all the cash and you leave the store with one bag so small that mice couldn't fuck in it. Repeat a dozen times or until the front of your brain dies. — Warren Ellis

The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, ... says "Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district! — Charles Darwin

Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all? — Jeffrey Kluger

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. — Robert Burns

'Cinderella' the cartoon scared me. I watched the bits with the mice, and the scenes with the stepsisters ripping her dress apart scared me. Cinderella was never even my favorite character in 'Into the Woods.' — Anna Kendrick

Who Moved My Cheese?: The Story ONCE, long ago in a land far away, there lived four little characters who ran through a Maze looking for cheese to nourish them and make them happy. Two were mice, named "Sniff" and "Scurry" and two were Littlepeople - beings who were as small as mice but who looked and acted a lot like people today. Their names were "Hem" and "Haw." Due to their small size, it would be easy not to notice what the four of them were doing. But if you looked closely enough, you could discover the most amazing things! Every day the mice and the Littlepeople spent time in the Maze looking for their own special cheese. The mice, Sniff and Scurry, possessing simple brains and good instincts, searched for the hard — Spencer Johnson

So you've been capturing mice and releasing them here?"
"Yes, anything wrong with that?"
"The thing is, if they're house mice, they'll just go on back home. You've probably been catching the same ones each day."
She considered for a moment and he tried very hard not to laugh. "I doubt it. The place is overrun with them. It's really not up to standard. I suspect the landlord's name is Rackman. — Susan Leona Fisher

We no longer pay attention to the clocks. Why should we? Noon is the taste of sawdust, and the feel of a splinter under a nail. Morning is mud and crumbling caulk. Evening is the smell of cooked tomatoes and mildew. And night is shivering, and the feel of mice sniffing around our skin. — Lauren Oliver

Don't tell me from genetics. What've they got to do with it?" said Crowley. "Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he'll grow up to be a demon just because his dad _became_ one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me. — Terry Pratchett

I would not trust a mouse to a woman if a man's judgment could be had. — Elizabeth Gaskell

"But I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." - Chris Hedges — Susan Abulhawa

When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it. — Pliny The Elder

Cat: a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings. — Oliver Herford

Musk had actually started thinking bigger than the Mars Society. Rather than send a few mice into Earth's orbit, Musk wanted to send them to Mars. Some very rough calculations done at the time suggested that the journey would cost $15 million. "He asked if I thought that was crazy," Zachary said. "I asked, 'Do the mice come back? Because, if they don't, yeah, most people will think that's crazy. — Ashlee Vance

The Catt sees not the mouse ever. — George Herbert

Curiosity killed the cat, but not before teaching her that honey bees are not sweet, tweeting birds are slow to react, mice can serve as both toys and food, big dogs like to snuggle, falling isn't flying, cream drips from lazy cows, water should be avoided at all costs, baths don't require getting wet, kindness and cruelty often fall from the same hand, and engines remain comfortably warm long after the motor dies. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse. — Frank Abagnale

When I was poor living in a garage in Kansas I began to draw the mice that scampered over my desk. That is how Mickey Mouse was born. — Walt Disney

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing. — E. E. Cummings

But evil fortune has decreed, (The foe of mice as well as men) The royal mouse at last should bleed, Should fall ne'er to arise again. — Michael Bruce

Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can, And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran: Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea - And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three! — Lewis Carroll

The chocolates are shaped like mice, with almond ears and licorice tails. He eats two immediately and puts the rest of the bag in the pocket of his coat, hoping they will not melt. He — Erin Morgenstern

Cheese runners shouted at it, tried to grab it, and flailed at it with sticks, but the piratical cheese scythed onward, reaching the bottom just ahead of the terrible carnage of men and cheeses as they piled up. Then it rolled back to the top and sat there demurely while still gently vibrating.
At the bottom of the slope, fights were breaking out among the cheese jockeys who were still capable of punching somebody, and since everybody was watching that, Tiffany took the opportunity to snatch up Horace and shove him in her bag. After all, he was hers. Well, that was to say she had made him, although something odd must have gone into the mix since Horace was the only cheese that would eat mice and, if you didn't nail him down, other cheeses as well. — Terry Pratchett

Shinya Yamanaka's work has involved mice and human cells, and advances the prospect of providing new cells or body parts for patients. — John Gurdon

Barney's Dad was really bad so Barney hatched a plan
when his dad said "Eat your peas."
Barney shouted no and ran
Barney tricked his mean old dad and locked him in the cellar
Barney's Mom never found out where he'd gone,
Cause Barney didn't tell her.
There his dad spent his life eating mice and gruel
With every bite for fifty years
he was sorry he'd been cruel — Bill Watterson

The old proverb was now made good, the mountain had brought forth a mouse. — Plutarch

Mice? Fine. Flying mice? Not so fine. — Lauren Oliver

maybe, I thought, we were all circus mice, running around with only the dimmest awareness that God and all His heavenly host were watching us in our Bakelite houses through our ivy-glass windows. — Stephen King

Three blind mice ... three blind mice, See how they run, See how they runt
They all run after the farmer's wife, She cut oft their tails with a carving
knife, Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three ... blind ... mice? — Daniel Keyes

I feel like Cinderella sitting in the middle of the road with a pumpkin and a couple of mice, while Prince Charming charges off to rescue some other chick. — Cynthia Hand

When he wasn't busy chasing unseen mice around the academy, Ion spent hours in the Borean Study, searching through dusty books for anything that had to do with the banshee or the Shroud. But finding this anything proved to be difficult as well, especially when the books you're reading have everything to do with something, but certainly nothing to do with your anything. And in trying to find this anything, Ion forgot about a very important, specific thing, which would quickly ruin his Wednesday. — Nikolas Lee

Fear not, we are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts. — Elizabeth I

In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats. — Gregory Maguire

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice. — Orson Scott Card

Once I found a mouse under my bed in an apartment in Paris. I am terrified of mice! I couldn't sleep for days. — Maud Welzen

As time went on, Sniff and Scurry continued their routine. They arrived early each morning and sniffed and scratched and scurried around Cheese Station C, inspecting the area to see if there had been any changes from the day before. Then they would sit down to nibble on the cheese. One morning they arrived at Cheese Station C and discovered there was no cheese. They weren't surprised. Since Sniff and Scurry had noticed the supply of cheese had been getting smaller every day, they were prepared for the inevitable and knew instinctively what to do. They looked at each other, removed the running shoes they had tied together and hung conveniently around their necks, put them on their feet and laced them up. The mice did not overanalyze things. To the mice, the problem and the answer were both simple. The situation at Cheese Station C had changed. So, Sniff and Scurry decided to change. They both looked out into the Maze. Then Sniff — Spencer Johnson

Scientists have found a way to keep middle-aged female mice from going through menopause. Now they're working on a way to keep middle-aged male mice from buying expensive sports cars. — Conan O'Brien

Living in the modern age, death for virtue is the wage. So it seems in darker hours. Evil wins, kindness cowers. Ruled by violence and vice we all stand upon thin ice. Are we brave or are we mice, here upon such thin, thin ice? Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price? — Dean Koontz

Now listen, we need to be quiet as mice. No, quieter than that. As quiet as ... as ... "
"Dead mice?" Reynie suggested.
"Perfect," said Kate with an approving nod. "As quiet as dead mice. — Trenton Lee Stewart

I gave the mouse a hole, and she is become my heire.
[I gave the mouse a hole, and she is become my heir.] — George Herbert

Why should your majesty think it? My own plans are made. While I may, I sail East in Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I row East in my coracle. When that sinks, shall I paddle East with my four paws. Then, when I can swim no longer, if I have not yet reached Aslan's Country, there shall I sink with my nose to the sunrise ... and Peepiceek will be head of Talking Mice in Narnia — C.S. Lewis

The heater doesn't work. The engine sounds sort of like a pig. And don't open the glove compartment because it disturbs the mice. — Juliet Rosetti

A mouse relies not solely on one hole. — Plautus

Any cat may stare into a fire and see red mice play, — George R R Martin

There's progress for you. A bigger and better mousetrap every month. Pretty soon, we'll all be able to kill all the mice at the same time. — Paul Auster

Life is hard for insects. And don't think mice are having any fun either. — Woody Allen

Scientists have detected about 100 imprinted genes in mice, and about half this number in humans. It's not clear if there are genuinely fewer imprinted genes in humans than in mice, or if it's just more difficult to detect them experimentally. Imprinting evolved about 150 million years ago7, and it really only occurs to a great extent in placental mammals. It isn't found in those classes that can reproduce parthenogenetically. — Nessa Carey

This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and cinders in the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on at all. — Willa Cather

Later that day, Kestrel sat with Arin in the music room. She played her tiles: a pair of wolves and three mice.
Arin turned his over with a resigned sigh. He didn't have a bad set, but it wasn't good enough, and beneath his usual level of skill. He stiffened in his chair as if physically bracing himself for her question.
Kestrel studied his tiles. She was certain he could have done better than a pair of wasps. She thought of the tiles he had shown earlier in the game, and the careless way in which he had discarded others. If she didn't know how little he liked to lose against her, she would have suspected him of throwing the game.
She said, "You seem distracted."
"Is that your question? Are you asking me why I am distracted?"
"So you admit that you are distracted."
"You are a fiend," he said, echoing Ronan's words during the match at Faris's garden party. Then, apparently annoyed at his own words, he said, "Ask your question. — Marie Rutkoski

Bianca and Mindy crept into the room like great big fashionable mice. — Caroline B. Cooney

I know because your mice have been sending Facebook messages to my mice. They really like the caps lock key. Someone should teach them about proper email etiquette. — Seanan McGuire

Why having been endowed with the courageous heart of a lion, do we live as mice? — Brendon Burchard

I couldn't ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection. Your love would never bridge a gap; it wouldn't even fill up the hole that the mice came through ... — Djuna Barnes

Squirrels, otters, hedgehogs, mice,
Moles with fur like sable,
Gathered in good spirits all,
Round the festive table.
Sit we down to eat and drink.
Friends, before we do, let's think,
Fruit of forest, field and banks,
To the seasons we give thanks. — Brian Jacques

Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time. But now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time. — Moondog

A woman and a mouse, they carry a tale wherever they go. — Gelett Burgess

Calling the cat stupid never made the mice wise. — Marty Rubin

It was the time when the field mice ventured out, after the hawks had settled in the trees but before the owls came to hunt. The sky was now the color Elv liked best - a tender dark blue, falling to earth like ashes. — Alice Hoffman

Do you think yourself a string too short to save? Do you think that you are lank and straight, a linear bit with no connection fore or aft? Fear not your insignificance. Nature has a drawer for you. Yes, nature garners all the string too short to save, and mice visit that drawer. Here's nesting material! Yes, you will be interwoven, be it now or later. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Yeah, but going by that cold tone of voice, she had to wonder whether the best-laid plans of mice and vampires, blah, blah, blah ... — J.R. Ward

It's as if cats live in a seperate universe that takes up the same space as ours, but is full of facinating things like mice or sparrows or special TV programs that we can't see. — Barbara Kingsolver

The cat does not negotiate with the mouse. — Robert K. Massie

Turned and ran down another. They remembered the corridors that held no cheese and quickly went into new areas. Sniff would smell out the general direction of the cheese, using his great nose, and Scurry would race ahead. They got lost, as you might expect, went off in the wrong direction and often bumped into walls. But after a while, they found their way. Like the mice, the two Littlepeople, Hem and Haw, also used their ability to think and learn from their past experiences. However, they relied on their complex brains to develop more sophisticated methods of finding Cheese. Sometimes they did well, but at other times their powerful human beliefs and emotions took over and clouded the way they looked at things. It made life in the Maze more complicated and challenging. Nonetheless, Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw all discovered, in their own way, what they were looking for. They each found their own kind of cheese one day at the end of one of the corridors in Cheese Station — Spencer Johnson

A cut cannot heal, unless you leave it alone. I'll open mine daily, leaving bones exposed — John Steinbeck

It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down the rabbit-hole
and yet
and yet
... — Lewis Carroll

The relevance of these special properties of the hippocampus and their role in map learning comes from a consideration of the massive upsurge in our use of technology for wayfinding. By focusing on the blue dot of a phone map, rather than looking about at our surroundings and making the effort to form a genuine map, we are short-circuiting the processes that we've learned to use over previous millennia. As far as finding our way is concerned, we have become striatal stimulus-response machines, racing through time and space like feverish maze mice hunting for cheese. — Colin Ellard

When the cats away, the mice will play. — Bob Marley

To begin with, convinced socialists will derive satisfaction from the mere fact of living in a socialist society.4 Socialist bread may well taste sweeter to them than capitalist bread simply because it is socialist bread, and it would do so even if they found mice in it. — Joseph Alois Schumpeter

It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it. — Henry Van Dyke

Simplify? Let me try. In school days, we are taught that if there are four animals in a room and you add two more, the total will be six. That is logic. But behind this logic, there are underlying assumptions. Now, if somebody tells you, there are four rats in the room and if you add two more cats in the room, how many animals in total exist in the room now? The answer will depend upon assumption. If you just use your mathematical brain, you will say six animals. If you use your human brain, you will say two animals. Why two animals? Because the two cats will eat the four rats in no time. — Ravindra Shukla

Our experience in fooling around with the genes of mice has taught us that many of the traits that interest us are not definite products of specific mutations but emergent phenomena arising from extremely complex interactions between genes, environment, and life experience. — Gary Wolf

It's no use organizing the mice if the cat doesn't agree. — Marty Rubin

It's just me and the Bane. And I'm fighting him because he killed all of those innocent mice and people, and I have to stop him. Not because Sandwich says so but because I say so. — Suzanne Collins

Barry L. Jacobs and colleagues from the neuroscience program at Princeton University showed that when mice ran every day on an exercise wheel, they developed more brain cells and they learned faster than sedentary controls. I believe in mice. — Bernd Heinrich

I can always tell when the mother in law's coming to stay; the mice throw themselves on the traps. — Les Dawson

Sam held one of the mice up by its tail over the box and then hesitated. "Her, you want to have a go?"...
If Sam thought she was going to squeal at the sight of nature in the raw, he had a lot to learn.
Bella fed the owlet, cheering as he gulped down his food with a greedy intensity that bode well for the little guy's future recovery. And she grinned to herself when she heard Sam mutter under this breath. "This has got to be the weirdest first date in history. — Deborah Blake

The tall blue spruce trees surrounding the church stood like ancient prophets in white gowns and a peregrine falcon that had taken up residence in the belfry perched on a ledge keeping an eye out for wandering mice. — Kathleen Valentine

The expression 'quiet as mice' is a puzzling one, because mice can often be very noisy, so people who are being quite as mice may in fact be squeaking and scrambling around. The expression 'quiet as mimes' is more appropriate, because mimes are people who perform theatrical routines without making a sound. Mimes are annoying and embarrassing, but they are much quieter than mice, so 'quiet as mimes' is a more proper way to describe how Violet and Sunny got up from their bunk, tiptoed across the dormitory, and walked out into the night. — Lemony Snicket