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Who really said it

Gilding the lily

Not Shakespeare’s words — a misquotation of King John William Shakespeare 1564–1616 · English playwright and poet
Disputed Free to reuse

The idea is Shakespeare’s, but the wording is not. In King John (Act 4, Scene 2) Salisbury says it is wasteful excess “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily” — he gilds the gold and paints the lily. The popular idiom “gilding the lily” collapses those two images into one and swaps the verb, a conflation Shakespeare never wrote.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“Gilding the lily” Shakespeare wrote "to gild refined gold, to paint the lily" (King John, Act 4, Scene 2, First Folio 1623) — not "gild the lily," which is a later misquotation.

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Provenance

The genuine line in King John

Work
King John
Passage
Act 4, Scene 2 (spoken by Salisbury)
First printed
First Folio, 1623
Actual words
“to gild refined gold, to paint the lily”

Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Salisbury’s speech criticising King John’s needless second coronation. Note the two separate images: one gilds refined gold, the other paints the lily.

King John, Act 4 Scene 2 — full text

How we verified this

  • Shakespeare’s line, spoken by Salisbury in King John, Act 4 Scene 2, is “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily” — he never wrote “gild the lily.”
  • The Grammarphobia Blog confirms the phrase Shakespeare used was “paint the lily,” and that the “gild the lily” misquotation has become far more common in modern usage.
  • Wiktionary calls “gild the lily” a common misquotation of the King John line and records Edith Wharton using it in A Motor-Flight Through France (1908).
Public domain

The genuine passage comes from Shakespeare’s King John, first printed in the 1623 First Folio — centuries before 1931 and firmly in the public domain. (The modern idiom “gild the lily” itself is a common-usage phrase with no single copyrighted owner.)

Fact-check

Why “gild the lily” isn’t Shakespeare

“Gilding the lily” is one of the most-quoted lines Shakespeare never wrote. It is a conflation of two images from a single sentence in King John.

A conflated misquotation paraphrase

Shakespeare’s Salisbury says it is excess “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily” — two distinct actions. Popular usage merged them, attaching “gild” to the “lily,” producing a phrase found nowhere in his text.

William Shakespeare genuine

The underlying thought — that adding ornament to something already perfect is “wasteful and ridiculous excess” — is genuinely Shakespeare’s, from this same King John speech.

Shakespeare wrote “paint the lily”; “gild the lily” is a later misquotation that overtook the original — as the Grammarphobia Blog and Wiktionary both document.

Context

How a mis-remembering became an idiom

Salisbury’s speech in King John piles up images of pointless excess: gilding gold that is already refined, painting a lily that is already white, perfuming a violet. Each is a separate over-adornment. Somewhere in later retelling, the ‘gild’ of the gold jumped onto the ‘lily,’ and the two most vivid images fused into a single, punchier phrase.

The mongrel version won. “Gild the lily” is now standard English, printed by writers as careful as Edith Wharton, while Shakespeare’s actual “paint the lily” sounds almost wrong to modern ears — a rare case where the misquotation has all but replaced the original.

He gilded the gold and painted the lily. Posterity gilded the lily.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

King John, Act 4 Scene 2 (full text)shakespeare.mit.edu

The complete scene containing Salisbury’s “to gild refined gold, to paint the lily” speech.
Gilding the Bardgrammarphobia.com

Language column confirming Shakespeare wrote “paint the lily” and that “gild the lily” is the modern misquotation.
gild the lilyen.wiktionary.org

Etymology entry calling the phrase a common misquotation of King John, with a dated 1908 Edith Wharton example.
Do you ‘gild’ the lily or ‘paint’ it?merriam-webster.com

Dictionary usage note tracing the shift from Shakespeare’s “paint the lily” to the popular “gild the lily.”
Gild the Lily — meaning and contextnosweatshakespeare.com

Plain-language explainer of the King John line and why the misquotation caught on.

The real source of the line

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright and poet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright and poet, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. King John, a history play written in the mid-to-late 1590s, was first printed in the 1623 First Folio. Its line about gilding gold and painting the lily gave rise to a durable English idiom — in a form Shakespeare himself never used.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

King John, Act 4 Scene 2 (First Folio, 1623)

William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King John,” Act 4, Scene 2, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623). Actual line: “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily.”

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Gilding the lily’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/gilding-the-lily

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