"The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions"

Classic idioms are a great way of learning about morals and issues in the real world. Take “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” as an example. It’s a great idiom with a profound meaning. This article will explain all you need to know about it.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is a good way of showing that doing good isn’t always as simple as it seems. While you might believe you are doing good things, it can often result in negative consequences for you and the people around you.

It can mean that you never know what will happen in your life. Life is rarely black and white. While you might mean to do good for some people, you will often find that you have wronged others, which could lead to a path directly to hell.

Sometimes, people are forced to do certain things that they know aren’t right, but they are doing them for the good of the people around them. It’s situations like these that could lead people to pave the way to hell. You have to be careful with the things you do in life.

The idiom is also used as a scapegoat. A lot of people use it when they want to try and blame other people for their mistakes or give themselves a reason to take life for granted.

By saying “the pathway to hell is paved with good intentions,” you’re essentially saying that good people are messing things up in your life. Generally, the people that say it in this sense only do so because it gives them an excuse to keep doing bad things.

If you don’t know, hell is where people go after death when they have sinned. So, it could mean that you get sent to hell even though you tried to do the right thing.

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The original quote is of unknown origin, though the first recorded iteration came from John Ray’s A Collection of English Proverbs, published in 1670. After that, it appeared again in Henry G. Bohn’s A Hand-book of Proverbs, published in 1855.

It is a very commonly regarded proverb. Most people use it when they’re trying to show that good intentions aren’t always the answer.

Since the 17th century publication of A Collection of English Proverbs, it has come up many other times in popular culture.

You could date the quote back even further (or a variation of it, at least). In the 16th Century, William Tyndale is quoted by John Foxe as saying, “beware of good intents.” While this isn’t an exact copy, it’s still a good example of how it developed.

The reason it can’t be dated back much further than that is because of how the proverb changed over time. In just two centuries, it went from “beware of good intents” to “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It’s likely that it changed even more than that in earlier centuries.

Since there are quite a lot of variations for this proverb, it’s worth looking into them some more. Here are some of the best ones we’ve come across:

It might also help to take a look at an example to see what this proverb might mean in certain contexts.

For this example, we will refer you to a family man that’s hard on his luck. He was once a hard-working man but has since fallen on tough times. He lost his job at a very good company and has yet to find work again.

This man also has a family to feed. He has three children and a wife, all of whom need his income to support them and make sure they live a comfortable life.

Unfortunately, he’s been out of work for a long time. It’s been so long that he’s running out of what money he had left over, meaning that they will soon be out of food.

The man resorts to stealing food from the local market. He has good intentions behind these actions. After all, he’s trying to feed his family. If he doesn’t steal the food (which he can’t afford), then his family will likely starve.

However, the man does not consider the consequences of his actions. The market owner is losing money. Every day, more of his stocks go missing, and there isn’t any money to replenish what was lost.

While the man is stealing the food for his family, his actions are causing issues for the owner of the market. Now, the man’s good intentions have started to adversely affect somebody else (even if he doesn’t quite realize it).

This example is a great way of trying to work out the meaning of this idiom. It shows that some people have to resort to sins, even if those sins are created with good intentions.

The good intention is that the man wants to feed his family. The sin is that he is stealing food to do so. While he was once an honest man, his actions will now doom him to spend eternity in hell if he’s not careful.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is a good life lesson that people can learn from. It shows that even though you might think you’re doing the right thing, you might be causing other people to suffer for whatever you choose to do in your life.

Martin holds a Master’s degree in Finance and International Business. He has six years of experience in professional communication with clients, executives, and colleagues. Furthermore, he has teaching experience from Aarhus University. Martin has been featured as an expert in communication and teaching on Forbes and Shopify. Read more about Martin here.