“No good deed goes unpunished (in Washington)”

“No good deed goes unpunished” is a humorous reverse of the classical “No good deed goes unrewarded. No bad deed goes unpunished.” Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) is often credited with the quip, but her first association with the line is documented from only 1957.
 
New York columnist Walter Winchell (1897-1972) wrote this in his column of October 5, 1942: “Reminds me of the line diplomats use: ‘No good deed goes unpunished in Washington.’” It is probable that Winchell popularized the saying. There is a 1938 citation that is similar: “‘Every good deed brings its own punishment.’”
 
   
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Clare Boothe Luce (April 10, 1903 - October 9, 1987) was an American playwright, journalist, editor, ambassador and political figure.
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. No good deed goes unpunished. 
 
The Yale Book of Quotations
Edited by Fred R. Shapiro
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
2006
Pp. 476-477:
Clare Booth Luce
U.S. politician and writer, 1903-1987
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
Attributed in Wash. Post, 5 Jan. 1957. Usually associated with Luce, but there is an earlier occurrence of “No good deed goes unpunished” in the Zanesville (Ohio)

, 5 Nov. 1942, attributed there to Walter Winchell. The saying may in fact be proverbial; the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs cited “1938 J. AGATE Ego 3 25 Jan. 275 Pavia was in great form to-day: ‘Every good deed brings its own punishment.’”
   
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Six Years Later: Or, The Taking of the Bastille.
Being the Sequel To, and Continuation of “The Memoirs of a Physician,” and “The Queen’s Necklace; Or, The Secret History of the Court of Louis the Sixteenth.”
By Alexandre Dumas
Published by T. B. Peterson
1851
Pg. 16:
...people are right in saying that a good deed never goes unrewarded.
 
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Vestiges of the Spirit-History of Man
By S. F. Dunlap (Samuel Fales Dunlap—ed.)
New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company
1858
Pg. 345:
His (Buddha’s—ed.) doctrine was that the events of this life are controlled by the acts committed during a former existence: that no wrong action remains unpunished, no good deed unrewarded.
     
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The letters to Gilbert White of Selborne From His Intimate Friend and Contemporary the Rev. John Mulso
By John Mulso, Rashleigh Holt-White, Gilbert White
Published by R.H. Porter
1907
Pg. 260:
...justified the old Eastern Adige, That a good Deed never goes unrewarded.
       
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The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas
By Thomas Aquinas
Published by T. Baker
1917
Item notes: V.3 NO.4
Pg. 222:
Now no evil deed is unpunished by God the just judge. Therefore no good deed is unrewarded, and so every good deed merits some good. 
 
5 October 1942, Tucson (AZ) Daily Citizen, “Walter Winchell On Broadway,” pg. 4, col. 3:
Reminds me of the line diplomats use: “No good deed goes unpunished in Washington.”
 
5 November 1942, Zanesville (OH) Signal, “Walter Winchell On Broadway,” pg. 4, col. 2:
Eric Brandies of the Journal-American’s essay department reports: “One of our columnists said that “no good deed goes unpunished in Washington”...Thanks for the ad.
     
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You Can Change the World!:
The Christopher Approach
By James Keller
New York, NY: Longmans, Green and Company
1948
Pg. 366:
“No good deed goes unpunished” runs the favorite quip of one zealous Christopher who has had her share of “knocks,” but who realizes that a sense of humor…
 
16 November 1951, Hartford (CT) Courant, “Old Adage Recalled As Army Service Proves Undoing Of Illegal Immigrant,” pg. 20:
There is an old saying that “No good deed goes unpunished.”
 
13 January 1953, New York (NY) Times, pg. 8:
As a Dutch official expressed it, “no good deed will ever remain unpunished.’‘