Even dust if piled can become a mountain

塵も積もれば山となる (chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru): even dust, piled up, becomes a mountain. Many small things, kept up, come to something great. The image is older than the proverb: piled earth in a Chinese philosopher of the third century BC, a Tang poet's couplet, and the preface to the Kokinshū in 905, where it describes how poetry itself grew. As a Japanese proverb it is in a book of sayings printed in 1656 and on a karuta card since. The dust is many, and the piling is the act.