There’s a lot of stone in the market…

When I thought about the theme of stone a few ideas came to mind. The one that I was very tempted to use is a selfie of me. What’s that got to do with stone you might ask. Well I’m 10 stone; and too old to be metric!

My saying today is ‘you can’t get blood out of a stone’.
What's the origin of the phrase?
This Old English proverb is first recorded in a collection of letters entitled Winter Evenings, by Vicesimus Knox, 1788:

They must have had abilities inherent in them or they could not have been excited, according to that common observation, that it is impossible to get blood out of a stone.

There is, however, good reason to believe that phrases of the form ‘you cannot get blood out of a [inanimate object of your choice]’ originated in Italian and were later translated into English.

In the 1640s to 1660s the Italian writer Giovanni Torriano wrote several books to aid Italian/English translation. They had subtitles like “Select Italian proverbs the most significant, very usefull for travellers, and such as desire that language: the same newly made to speak English…”