Came about this phrase ‘glid the lily’ while reading an FT article. To glid the lily is to attempt to improve something that’s already good or perfect, often causing it to be worse or overdone, if not waste of time. A quick search showed that this term came from a misquote from Shakespeare’s play King John “To glid refined gold, to paint the lily.. is wasteful and ridiculous excess.”
To carry coals to Newcastle is a similar phrase. So is to preach to a choir.
This resonated to me as we do sometime over do things. There’s a saying, perfect is the enemy of good.
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