12 Quotes Tagged: good-intentions

A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill.

that man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect

Save me from the virtuous.

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

All of my words, if not well put nor well taken, are well meant.

All of my words, if not well put or well taken, are well meant.

Exactly what the powers of hell feed on: the best instincts in man.

Hell is paved with good intentions.

Had I done it sooner, perhaps he might have lived. He was a man of courage and good heart, a proud man. Now he is dead. I saved the signal to use in a worthy cause, and when I found one it was wasted.”

“Wasted?” answered Fflewddur. “I think not. Since you did your best and didn’t begrudge using it, I shouldn’t call it wasted at all.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.