“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
“The steady drip of water causes stone to hollow and yield.”
Book I, line 313 (tr. Stallings)
Variant translation: Continual dropping wears away a stone.
Compare: "The soft droppes of rain pierce the hard marble; many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks", John Lyly, Euphues, 1579 (Arber's reprint), p. 81
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Original
Stilicidi casus lapidem cavat.
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Lucretius 45
Roman poet and philosopher -94–-55 BCRelated quotes
“Drops of water hollow out a stone.”
Gutta cavat lapidem
IV, x, 5; Arthur Leslie Wheeler translation
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)
Quoted in "A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia" - Page 3 - by Alexander N. Yakovlev, Anthony Austin - Political Science - 2002 -
“The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.”