1. You're going to end up stuck in the same dead-end career for your whole life, if you're not careful—time and tide wait for no man.
2. Hurry up or we'll miss the bus! Time and tide wait for no man.

This proverbial phrase, alluding to the fact that human events or concerns cannot stop the passage of time or the movement of the tides, first appeared about 1395 in Chaucer's Prologue to the Clerk's Tale. The alliterative beginning, time and tide, was repeated in various contexts over the years but today survives only in the proverb, which is often shortened.