who said no good deed goes unpunished

The phrase "No good deed goes unpunished" has uncertain origins and has been attributed to many different people over time, including Oscar Wilde, Billy Wilder, Clare Boothe Luce, John P. Grier, and Andrew W. Mellon. However, its earliest known iteration dates back to the 12th century in a work by courtier Walter Map titled De Nugis Curialium , where he wrote something very similar: "left no good deed unpunished, no bad one unrewarded." The phrase expresses a cynical view that kind actions often lead to negative consequences rather than rewards. Interestingly, in the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote the opposite idea — that good deeds are rewarded and evil deeds punished by divine justice. The phrase as it is known today gained popularity in the 20th century through various writers and commentators but cannot be conclusively attributed to a single originator or author.