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I am looking for a proverb (short adage) for when one is already in a hurry but the situation makes the person wait even more.

Today I was in a hurry. I had to reach home at 2 o'clock but the driver of a local bus was driving very slowly and he was picking passengers up along the way. This later made me feel embarrassed at home. I had an urgent job at home. I reached home very late at 3:30. This happens to me. The more I am in hurry, the more a situation doesn't go my way.

I have another example. I was waiting for my friend today outside a gym. He told me he would come out in 20 minutes. He took almost one hour to come out of the gym. This made me delay my own tasks at home. Also, the bike's tyre was punctured.

I hope there is a proverb or short adage for this type of scenario in English, as it's a very diverse language.

I have only one idea: every passing moment brings death. This might mean things worsen over time.

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  • Why would a slow driver embarrass you? I think that must be the wrong word here. Commented 2 days ago
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    @SuhailNazirKhan Your imagination is better than mine. I think you're right. :) The question was filled with non-idiomatic stuff. Good for an advanced English test. Commented 2 days ago
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    This question is similar to: Equivalent idiom for "The hasty bridegroom has carried the women away". ,More haste, less speed.' If you believe it’s different, please edit the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem. Commented 2 days ago
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    @Shaddy 'More haste, less speed' is an idiom (of the extragrammatical kind: here, a statement lacking a finite verb). It is also an adage or arguably a proverb. The answers overlap; do we need 'more haste, less speed' more than once? Commented 2 days ago
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    All your content about time and hurrying but then you come up with every passing moment brings death so users think they can just generalize and go with whatever bad luck, or even incompetence, that brought about any possible scenario. Which would make the question off-topic, for various reasons. How important is time (and hurrying) in your question? Paramount or not at all? Commented 17 hours ago

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There is haste makes waste.

Merriam-Webster says

used to say that doing something too quickly causes mistakes that result in time, effort, materials, etc., being wasted

It's also listed in Wiktionary

Being too hasty leads to wasteful mistakes.

Wiktionary also gives the variant great haste makes great waste.

Another idiom is more haste, less speed. This means that if you try and do things faster, you actually end up doing them more slowly.

Wiktionary:

When one is in a hurry, one often ends up having less success and completing a task more slowly.

Wiktionary notes that speed has the older sense of "success, luck" which informs this proverb - though with the play on words of speed also meaning "quickness".

The Latin equivalent, sometimes heard in English, is festina lente (Wikipedia), meaning literally "make haste slowly!"

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    This isn't happening in either of the OP's examples. They didn't do anything wrong because they were in a hurry, it was other people seemingly conspiring against them. Commented 2 days ago
  • I think in the OP's examples there's an element of helplessness due to outward circumstances. It's nothing to do with their making mistakes, so this doesn't quite work. Commented 2 days ago
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    As other comments point out, these don’t fit the examples in the question body. But they are excellent for the question as phrased in the title. Commented 2 days ago
  • This is more like measure twice and cut once and stuff like that, for knitting three arms in a sweater or whatever. But not my downvote. Commented 16 hours ago
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The examples in the body of the question put me in mind of it never rains but it pours. This is used when it seems that one bad event is always followed up by a bunch of other bad events (you need to get home quickly, but then your friend is late, and you find your bicycle has a puncture). The meaning being that it can never simply rain a little bit; whenever it starts to rain, it always pours with rain. Cambridge Dictionary has:

said when one bad thing happens, followed by a lot of other bad things that make a bad situation worse

This isn't just related to being late when you're in a hurry, though, and is used more generally for any bad events. (Of course in real life it frequently does rain without pouring, as pointed out by Richard Adams in Watership Down!)

'Human beings say, 'It never rains but it pours.' This is not very apt, for it frequently does rain without pouring. The rabbits' proverb is better expressed. They say, 'One cloud feels lonely': and indeed it is true that the appearance of a single cloud often means that the sky will soon be overcast.'

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  • Already there in the comments below my answer. Commented 19 hours ago
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    @SuhailNazirKhan - Comments don't count and, like secondary answers, are up for grabs. Futhermore, duplicate answers are allowed, assuming the content is significantly different. If that hasn't changed recently. Commented 16 hours ago
  • I've always heard this as phrased as "when it rains it pours". Commented 5 hours ago
  • Indeed, "when it rains it pours" is the US version, whereas "it never rains but it pours" is more common in the UK. Commented 3 hours ago
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Based on the examples, you are looking for a proverb that says "the more you are in a hurry, the more circumstances conspire to slow you down." This is a different message than "the more you are in a hurry, the more you make mistakes that slow you down." For that latter message, "haste makes waste" is the exact proverb, but that is not what you are looking for. That is, you would not say "haste makes waste" when the bus is late on the one day you really need it to be on time.

The standard expression for "Murphy's law" is that "Anything that can go wrong, will." That is not quite the same as saying "just when you need things to go quickly is exactly when they will go slowly", but still it kind of fits. Your friend taking forever is one thing that can go wrong, and indeed it did. But it is more general.

One common thing people say when this sort of thing happens is just "It figures," which is an expression meaning "that makes sense given what I know about the world." You can use it non-sarcastically for something that really does make sense, but the implication here is that you already expected the universe to be conspiring against you, and, sure enough, it is. But that's also more general.

The fact is, unless I am mistaken, there is no proverb for this particular situation exactly.

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I think Murphy's Law summarizes the two situations perfectly.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary:

the principle that if it is possible for something to go wrong, it will go wrong

The bus is always late but today when I was late it came on time - that's Murphy's law!

[CED]

An extension of the original Murphy's Law is called Finagle's Law, which states:

Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment

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    More like the extended version, which adds "and at the worst possible time". Commented 2 days ago
  • @Barmar Was only aware of Murphy's Law. Thanks. Have added the extended version. Commented 2 days ago
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    @Dove More of an empirical observation, which is used in these types of situations. If you're looking for a proverb, when it rains, it pours is s close fit to the situations in the question. Commented 2 days ago
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    @SuhailNazirKhan If you click on the votes figure you will see you have no downvotes (as at the time of this comment, anyway). Someone may have retracted an upvote. Commented 2 days ago
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    An epigram for 'when one bad thing happens it causes a chain -reaction of bad things has already been closed as a duplicate. The only argument for this question being different is the 'hurrying leading to even more wasted time' factor, which would need addressing directly ... Murphy's Law is too general here. Commented 2 days ago
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Martin Manser, The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs (2002) includes the following entry for always in a hurry, always behind, which is quite similar in meaning to "more haste, less speed":

always in a hurry, always behind When you try to do things too quickly, you work less efficiently and ultimately take longer: Bearing in mind the saying "Always in a hurry, always behind," I made an effort to slow down and work more methodically. The proverb was first recorded in 1948 in a U.S. proverb collection.

The 1948 proverb collection that Manser cites is Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases. The earliest in-the-wild occurrence of the proverb that I could find in a Chronicling America newspaper database search was from "Why Vernon Was Always Late Getting to School," in the Washington [D.C.] Times (November 17, 1926):

When the teacher left she knew that Vernon lived in a topsy-turvy house. There was no system, no regularity about anything Mother and daughter rushed from one task or pastime to another—always in a hurry and always behind time.

But similar expressions go back to the 1850s. From an untitled item in the Baton Rouge [Louisiana] Morning Comet (February 13, 1856):

Don't be in a Hurry.—It's no sort of use. We never knew of a fellow who was always in a hurry, that wasn't always behind hand. They are proverbial, all over the world, for bringing nothing at all to pass.

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  • This has nothing to do with how efficiently the person in a hurry is working. Commented yesterday
  • @Barmar It has a conditional meaning: the more you hurry the more you fall behind. So the more you hurry the less efficient you are. Commented yesterday
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More generic: add insult to injury (similar: rub salt into the wound)

I was already getting late and to add insult to injury, my bike had a flat tyre.

theidioms.com:

add insult to injury

to make a bad situation worse
to further hurt the feelings of someone who has already been hurt
to worsen an unfavorable or uncomfortable situation
to add to a loss with mockery or indignity

I was already getting late for work stuck in the traffic, and to add insult to injury, I was stopped by the police for speeding.

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  • I think this idiom would be best choice for the OP if he's looking for an idiom as well. +1 for the suitability of the phrase. Commented 8 hours ago
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I'd suggest a watched pot never boils. From theidioms.com:

a watched pot never boils

Meaning

  • if you wait for something to happen it takes longer
  • time slows down when one is waiting for something to get done
  • it refers to the elongation of time when one is waiting for something to happen urgently
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"The hurrier I go, the behinder I get," unknown origin, often misappropriated to Lewis Caroll.

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The expression I would use in this case is

More haste, less speed.

"Haste" indicates the efforts to be quick, and "speed" the actual resulting quickness -- or lack thereof.

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