Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little… - Plutarch

Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield
themselves up when taken little by little.

For water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.

Now at the time of which I was speaking, as the voters were inscribing their ostraka [to determine which politician would be expelled from the city], it is said that an unlettered and utterly boorish fellow handed his ostrakon to Aristides, whom he took to be one of the ordinary crowd, and asked him to write Aristides on it. He, astonished, asked the man what possible wrong Aristides had done him. “None whatever,” was the answer, “I don’t even know the fellow, but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called ‘The Just.’ ” On hearing this, Aristides made no answer, but wrote his name on the ostrakon and handed it back.

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.