Deborah Kolosova Jan 16, 2010:

I don't know with respect to the Russian expression about squeezing water from a stone, but in English when they say "you can't get blood from a stone," it doesn't simply refer to any pointless effort in general, but to the fact that it's pointless to try to get something that's not there. It usually refers to an effort to obtain money from someone who doesn't have any, just as a stone has no blood (I've also heard the variant "you can't get blood from a turnip). Is the Russian expression used in the same way? Someone in one of the comments referred to a giant in a fairy tale actually squeezing water from a stone, so it doesn't really sound like it has the same associations as the English expression.