This comment was made by James Knox Millen in his book Your Nose Knows, which I read when I was an undergraduate.
Microscopic mice. What a great metaphor for the triviality of so many of the products of academic research.
Now, the reason I am posting about this (other than just thinking of that quote recently) is that when I did a Google search on "bring forth microscopic mice," two sites came up: one from Google Books, with the section of Millen's book, and a second, a LJ post I apparently made on April 25, 2017. I do vaguely remember authoring the post, and I think at the time I was trying to remember the source. But the strange thing is, when I clicked on the link for that Google hit, instead of the post about microscopic mice, up came an April 25, 2017 post titled "LJ 18th anniversary" with a congratulations for being on LJ for 13 years and 10 months and some stats on the number of my posts, my comments, and comments received. Why the heck did this replace my post on microscopic mice?
I searched for the microscopic mice post with The Wayback Machine. No dice. What are the Russians up to?