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Who really said it

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful

Attributed to Mae West 1893–1980 · American actress, playwright and vaudeville-bred wit
Attributed Rights unconfirmed

Widely credited to Mae West and entirely consistent with her habit of flipping stern proverbs into come-ons — but no primary source pins this exact line. Wikiquote files it under “Unsourced” ↗, and popular claims that it comes from her 1959 memoir or a 1930s film remain undocumented.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful” — Mae West (attributed; source undocumented)

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Mae West — American actress, playwright and vaudeville-bred wit. Theme: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

A signature line with no signature

Credited to
Mae West (1893–1980)
Often cited as
her 1959 memoir Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It — unconfirmed
Documented status
Unsourced — no film scene or page number pinned
Inverts the proverb
“too much of a good thing” (Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1600)

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.

Also circulates in the shorter form “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.” Both are Mae West’s deliberate flip of the centuries-old warning that one can have too much of a good thing.

Mae West on Wikiquote

How we verified this

The exact first appearance of this wording has not been documented, so no copyright status can be asserted. If it is genuinely Mae West’s, every plausible source — her 1930s Paramount films, her 1959 memoir, or a later compiled collection — was first published after 1931 and would remain in copyright to the Mae West estate and/or original publisher, not public domain.

Fact-check

The catch: everyone names a source, no one can show it

The attribution to Mae West is plausible and unchallenged — the problem is the false precision bolted onto it. Quote sites confidently name a book or film that none of them can actually cite.

Her 1959 memoir or a 1930s film unverified

Aggregators variously assign the line to Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It (1959) or to a Paramount picture, but none pins a page or scene, and Wikiquote keeps it in the “Unsourced” column ↗.

Mae West variant

It travels as both “can be wonderful” and the tighter “is wonderful” ↗ — a sign it was passed around by ear rather than copied from a fixed text.

An old proverb older

The joke depends on a warning far older than West — that you can have too much of a good thing — whose earliest print form is Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1600) ↗.

Best read as a genuine Mae West quip in spirit — hers by style and long association — but one whose exact wording sits undocumented in the record ↗, reworking a proverb centuries older than she was.

Context

Why it sounds like her

Mae West built a career on inversion: taking the prim moral of a proverb and turning it into an invitation. “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful” is that engine in one line — it answers the old caution that you can overdo pleasure with a flat, delighted “yes, and?”

That is exactly why it resists verification. The line is so perfectly in character that quote collectors reached for a source after the fact, attaching her memoir or a film without ever showing the words on a page. The honest position: the sentiment is unmistakably Westian, but the citation is missing.

She didn’t coin the proverb — she coined the comeback to it.

On the proverb she flipped

The phrase “too much of a good thing” was already proverbial by the late 15th century. Its most famous early appearance is in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (c. 1600), when Rosalind teases, “Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?” For centuries it carried a note of warning. West’s contribution — whenever she first said it — was to strip the warning out entirely.

Explore

Filed under

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

Happiness

Go further

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.

Wikiquote: Mae Westen.wikiquote.org

Sourced and unsourced Mae West quotations; this line does not appear in a cited section.
Wikiquote Talk: Mae Westen.wikiquote.org

Working list where the line is explicitly filed under Unsourced.
Mae Westen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the actress-playwright, her Paramount films, and her 1959 memoir.
'Too much of a good thing' originphrases.org.uk

Traces the proverb Mae West inverts to Shakespeare's As You Like It (1600).
As You Like It, Act 4 Scene 1shakespeare.mit.edu

Rosalind: 'Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?'

About the wit

Who was Mae West?

Mae West

1893–1980 · American actress, playwright and vaudeville-bred wit

Mae West was an American actress, screenwriter and playwright who turned double-entendre into an art form on the vaudeville stage, in her own scandal-courting Broadway plays, and in 1930s Paramount films such as She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel. She wrote most of her own dialogue, and her comic method was to take a piece of received wisdom and flip it into something knowing and appetitive. So many quips are pinned on her that a West-sounding line and a documented one are not always the same thing.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Attributed to Mae West (1893–1980). Widely quoted from the mid-20th century onward and often linked — without confirmation — to her memoir Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959); recorded as unsourced in Wikiquote. The line inverts the proverb best known from Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1600).

MLA (9th ed.)

West, Mae. Attributed quotation; no verified primary source located.

APA (7th ed.)

West, M. (n.d.). [Attributed quotation; no verified primary source located].

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/too-much-of-a-good-thing-can-be-wonderful

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