Mark Twain Quotes

As soon as you forbid something, you make it extraordinarily appealing. You also bring shame in as a phenomenon.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

When I'm not supposed to do something, it becomes more attractive to me.

It's one of the most basic laws of human nature, isn't it? The more we are denied something, the more we want it. The more silence given to this or that topic, the more power.

You can't forbid children to do things that are available to them at every turn. God told Eve, 'Don't give the apple to Adam,' and look what happened. It's in our nature to want the things we see.

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire.

Things forbidden have a secret charm.

It was not that Adam ate the apple for the apple's sake, but because it was forbidden. It would have been better for us-oh infinitely better for us-if the serpent had been forbidden.

As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.

Adam did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it because it was forbidden.

If you tell me I can't have something then that just makes me want it more.

Prohibitions create the desire they were intended to cure.

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to 't.

We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us.

The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.

And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.

We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.

Forbid a fool a thing, and that he'll do.

When you stop people from doing certain things, there is a good chance that they will do exactly what they have been told to abjure. That is how human nature is.

If you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.

Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

What is allowed us is disagreeable, what is denied us causes us intense desire.