In the old times, when it came to a match between our ancient wrestlers, the participants in order to define the strongest ones used to grab a rock and raise it to gain more popularity; but prior to taking that when the person tended to pick a very big rock the surrounding audience had am expression which they would use to convey the message: it is the "sign of" a failure meaning that they might not be able to lift a stone of that size!
Later, the expression turned to a proverbial sentence and today, it can be used for any unlikely, improbable or unrealistic case which is a bit far from mind to occure! Actually we use this proverb to allude to any sort of seemingly unattainable goal which is too big to be achieved.
The only equivalent I've come across in English is:
- Great promise, small performance. [wich you can with a simple search on google find it as a type of translation from another language]
I was wondering if there is any equivalent of such a concept in current English.
Thank you in advance.