Someone whose patience is being tried by another person's faults or provocations is deciding whether to put up with them or react.

The saying joins two kinds of restraint: bearing what is difficult and refraining from an impulsive response. It presents patience as something shown both in endurance and in conduct. It can also counsel tolerance toward another person’s faults or provocations. The point is not that the difficulty disappears, but that one can choose how to respond to it.

Use it to urge patience when a hardship must be faced or when someone is tempted to answer a provocation in anger. Its brevity suits a direct reminder, though it may sound dismissive if said to someone seeking help with a serious problem.

The saying advises bearing with a loved one’s faults or difficult behaviour rather than losing that person. It weighs two costs, the strain of putting up with someone and the loss of the relationship, and judges the first to be the smaller. Patience here is not praised for its own sake; it is the price paid to keep someone dear. The comparison holds only while the relationship is worth more than what must be tolerated. The saying is misapplied as pressure to stay with someone who causes real harm, and it does not promise that patience will change the other person or that the relationship will improve. It concerns ordinary friction between people who value each other, not every hurt one person may do to another.

The saying was recorded as counsel on keeping a friendship or other close bond by bearing with the other person. Its present-day use is not established. As counsel it suits a quarrel or an irritation between people who care about each other, where it could remind someone what an angry break would cost; it would be the wrong advice for someone who is being mistreated.