Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"
Stetes Wasser höhlt den Stein.
German vs. Brazilian (Portuguese)
I think the best English approximation of the German version is: Steady water drills the stone.
First we see that the German at once describes and commands the actions: "drills". There is no time measure here, the point is the damn rock's getting drilled and that's that.
In Brazilian/Portuguese the talk is of eventually. As in, sure it's inevitable but the stone and the water will have a lot of time together, they will change over time.
Next we can observe that while Portuguese/Brazilian provides details, like many holes, the German is light on flowery detail, one hole, many holes, not relevant to the pain point, which is: rock->drilled rock.
Lastly we can see the German implies the stone is hard, hard is the default nature of all things in Germany, especially stones.
The Portuguese/Brazilian on the other hand specifically qualifies the stone as hard, presumably because Brazil is filled with soft stones, gently dancing under the feet of girls in Ipanema.
I don't think "drill" is such a good translation though. Höhlen comes from "Höhle", meaning "cave". Maybe a better translation:
Steady water hollows the stone.
And you got to admit that the "German assumption of hardness" is actually pretty accurate when it comes to stones! (Except those in Brazil, presumably.)