The primrose path refers to someone living a life of luxury. Not to be confused with "led up the 'garden path'", which is an idiom suggesting that one is being deceived or led astray. E.g. "You've been led up the garden path if you believe it's cheaper to buy from ** than from **"
An early appearance of the phrase in print occurs in Shakespeare's 1602 play Hamlet (Act I, Scene III), where Ophelia, rebuffing her brother Laertes' insistence that she resist Hamlet's advances, warns Laertes against hypocrisy:
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.
Famous quotes containing the word path:
“The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)