Someone is deciding whether a delay is something to endure or something that will cost them the chance to act.

The saying pairs time with tide and says that neither waits for anyone: both move on whether or not a person is ready. It uses that to warn against delay: an opportunity has its moment, and the person who hesitates or puts things off may find it has passed. Its lesson is to act while the chance is still there rather than wait for a more convenient time. Among sayings about patience, it stands on the other side. It does not argue against patience in general, but against waiting when the delay itself costs the chance to act. It is misapplied as pressure to rush a decision that really needs time, or to a situation that waiting cannot spoil. Its force depends on telling apart a delay that only has to be endured from one that loses an opportunity.

It might be said to someone who is putting off a decision or an action that has a limited window, such as applying before a closing date, taking up an offer or settling a matter while the people involved are still available. It can work as a prompt or a gentle warning. It may land as unwelcome pressure when the person is delaying for a good reason, and as a reproach when it is said after a chance has already been missed.

The saying names patience as the remedy for hard times. When circumstances turn against a person and cannot be changed quickly, bearing them is itself the treatment. It treats endurance as something active that helps, rather than as what is left when every remedy has failed, and its lesson is that steady patience is the right response to a hardship that cannot be shortened. The counsel fits conditions that really cannot be hurried or removed. It is misapplied when a difficulty has a practical remedy, or when waiting would cost a chance to act, since in those cases action rather than endurance is called for. It does not say that hardship is good or deserved, and it gives no promise of when hard times will end; it speaks only to how they should be borne.

The saying was recorded as counsel for someone living through a run of misfortune that no effort of theirs could quickly end. Its present-day use is not established. Read as counsel, it could steady a person by giving them something to do, namely to endure, but offered too quickly to someone whose trouble has a remedy, it could sound like a refusal to help.