The words “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.” They’ve become a 21st century meme, one to which–whatever side they’re on–people nod their heads, sure that they’re in the right of it, whenever a POV appears which supports their own.
But their origins are a bit less binary, and a lot more vague. And their application, in this or that circumstance, is a lot more personal.
The invaluable quoteinvestigator site comes up with several examples WRT this particular phrase. Among them it dissects attributions to Oscar Wilde, Clare Boothe Luce, Walter Map, Marie Belloc, and several others.
It seems to me (after a bit of possibly less-than-determinative research), Clare Boothe Luce (who died 121 years ago, on March 10, 1903) may own this particular phrase, if not the underlying sentiment. That underlying sentiment, an inversion of Thomas Aquinas’s assertion that no good deed goes unrewarded (if only that were true!!) has been around for several hundred years.
Regardless (or irregardless as the case may be) I’ll continue to try for the “good deeds,” no matter the consequences. If you’re so dumb, so angry, so stuck-in-place, or so bitter as to reject them in favor of your own narcissism, then that–friend–is on you.
I see you. Others do too.
Let the chips fall where they may. And this is where they fall around here:
A tiny, 5lb, utterly defenseless, dependent, lamb. And his nanny, a 130lb Great Pyrenees.
If that’s not a sheepdog metaphor, I don’t know what is.
