Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Mouse
I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek.
That hath but oon hole for to sterte to.
Chaucer—Paraphrase of the Prologue of The Wyves Tale of Bath. L. 572.
The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum. Plautus—Trunculentus. IV.
It had need to bee
A wylie mouse that should breed in the cat’s eare.
Heywood—Proverbs. Pt. II. Ch. V.
“Once on a time there was a mouse,” quoth she,
“Who sick of worldly tears and laughter, grew
Enamoured of a sainted privacy;
To all terrestrial things he bade adieu,
And entered, far from mouse, or cat, or man,
A thick-walled cheese, the best of Parmesan.”
Lorenzo Pignotti—The Mouse Turned Hermit.
When a building is about to fall down all the mice desert it.
Pliny the Elder—Natural History. Bk. VIII. Sec. CIII.
The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole,
Can never be a mouse of any soul.
Pope—The Wife of Bath. Her Prologue. L. 298.
The mouse ne’er shunn’d the cat as they did budge
From rascals worse than they.
Coriolanus. Act I. Sc. 6. L. 44.