“You can’t get blood from a stone” is classic in the US. “No more juice from the squeeze” is another variant.
How is that even similar?
How is it not? The euphemisms all mean you “cant get X from Y.”
Both of my examples mean exactly that.
“You can’t make a silk purse from sows ear” means you can’t make something nice from rubbish. “You can’t get blood from a stone” means attempting something difficult, if not impossible and futile”. E.g. “trying to get my kids to tell me about their school day is like trying to get blood from a stone.” It doesn’t matter how hard I try I get nothing.
A sow is a female pig, which doesnt produce silk at all. Attempting to get silk from it would be difficult, if not impossible and futile. It wouldn’t matter how hard you try, you would get nothing.
You can get as much silk from a sows ear as you can get blood from a stone. I dont see much differnce, but i guess the sows ear phrase requires more culture context if it means “you can’t get something nice from rubbish.”
One of the versions I have heard about this analogy comes from corn silk. The corn fed to pigs is usually of the lowest quality, and if you use the silk from cheap ears of corn, you won’t be able to make a useful purse out of it
巧妇难为无米之炊 – “even the cleverest house wife cannot cook without rice”.
You can put your boots in the oven, but that don’t make 'em biscuits
Probably the closest in Irish is “is deacair olann a bhaint de ghabhar” (it’s hard to get wool from a goat)
Lipstick on a pig along with others already mentioned.
cuir síoda ar ghabhar; is gabhar fós é
In Australia there’s “you can’t polish a turd”
But you can roll it in glitter
“You can’t put lipstick on a pig” was popular for about a year in the US, circa 2007
“Even if you give an ape a ring, it’ll remain an ugly thing.” -Netherlands.
A golden ring specifically
If I understand the original idiom, the nearest French expression would be “you can’t make a race horse from a donkey” (“tu ne peux pas faire un cheval de course d’un âne”).
In the US there’s the saying “you can’t squeeze water from a stone”
You can’t paint the Mona Lisa with crayons.
Kind of related to yours, “You’re putting lipstick on a pig”
