The scientists are not revealing their 90-country scores yet, pending the actual publication of the study, but they are tipping their hands a little. Watch your steps, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and, yes, China.
the road to hell is paved with good intentions
tip one's hand
Accidentally reveal one's intentions, as in He avoided any comments on birthdays for fear of tipping his hand about the surprise party. This idiom probably alludes to holding one's hand in such a way that others can see the cards one is holding. [Colloquial; early 1900s]
the road to hell is paved with good intentions
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
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Meaning
The intention to engage in good acts often fails. The phrase
is also sometimes interpreted as meaning that good intentions may have unwanted
negative consequences. This second interpretation is at odds with early versions
of the proverb (see below).
Origin
The origin of almost all proverbs is shrouded by the mists
of time. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of claimants to the authorship of
'The road to hell is paved with good intentions'.
The expression is often attributed to the Cistercian abbot
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153). This attribution was made by St
Francis de Sales in Correspondence: Lettres d'Amitié
Spirituelle(written in 1640 and printed in 1980). The de Sales version was
'l'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs', which translates as ‘hell is
full of good intentions and wishes’. The five hundred year gap and the fact that
the text isn't found in the works of St Bernard suggests that we can discount
Francis's account.
And... just when you've
waited five hundred years for one St. Bernard myth, along comes a second. St.
Bernard rescue dogs don't carry casks of brandy around their necks to give
drinks to people who are stranded in snowdrifts. That idea comes from a painting
by the popular Victorian painter Sir Edwin Landseer. His 1820 painting Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a
Distressed Traveller shows
such a scene and the image entered the public consciousness. However, Landseer
made it up, it never happened.
Back to the proverb. Early English versions don't refer to
the road to hell or suggest that such a road was paved, but simply state that
hell was filled with good intentions. In more recent times there is always a
mention of paving. This adaptation may have been influenced by Ecclesiasticus
20:10:
The way of sinners is made plain with stones, but at the end thereof is the pit of hell.
The person who made the 'paved' version popular appears to
have been James Boswell in The
Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D.,1791, who is second favourite after Saint
Bernard as the suggested author of this proverb:
No saint, however, in the course of his religious warfare, was more sensible of the unhappy failure of pious resolves, than Johnson. He said one day, talking to an acquaintance on this subject, "Sir Hell is paved with good intentions."
Johnson didn't coin the phrase however. In 1670, the English
theologian John Ray published A Collection of English
Proverbs, in which he used the version that Johnson later
quoted.
The 'road' element was added even later. The first time that
the complete proverb 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' appears in
print is in Henry G. Bohn's A
Hand-book of Proverbs, 1855. Neither Bohn nor Ray claimed to have coined
the phrase, they were collectors, not originators.
As to who did coin the phrase. I intended to discover that
and to let you know but, regrettably, the road to hell is paved with good
intentions.
See other English Proverbs
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