The road to hell is paved with good intentions

The road to hell is paved with good intentions is an idiom or proverb.^[1] It is about the difference between what someone intends to do and the outcome of their actions. In other words, the consequences of one's actions can be awful and tragic instead of the good intentions that lead one to do them.^[2] This can be the result of poor planning.

History

In the mid-12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, "L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs" (hell is full of good wishes and desires). ^[3] The sentence has been repeated many times in other languages and contexts.

In 1775, Samuel Johnson commented on "the unhappy failure of pious resolves" when he is reported saying, "Sir, hell is paved with good intentions."^[4]

Select examples

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• 1631: George Herbert wrote in Jacula Prudentum, "Hell is full of good meanings and wishings."^[4]
• 1825: Walter Scott wrote in a letter to Miss Joauna Baillie, "I well intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some stern old divine says, " Hell is paved with good intentions" ... and so all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I suppose, "the burning marle" of the infernul regions."^[4]
• 1857: George John Whyte-Melville wrote in The Interpreter, "... if hell be paved with good intentions, it might be roofed with lost opportunities."^[5]
• 1942: C. S. Lewis explained in The Screwtape Letters, "The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”^[6]
• Friedrich Hölderlin, "What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven."^[7]

Related pages

• Unintended consequences