Forbidden Quotes

• 

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

  Mark Twain

  Motivational, Forbidden Love, Temptation

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.31, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Francois Rabelais

  Long, Forbidden Love, Desire

  63 Copy quote

• When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Atheist, Government, Church

  Robert A. Heinlein (2007). “Glory Road”, p.318, Macmillan

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

  Mark Twain

  Mistake, Apples, Want

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 2, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.

  Winston Churchill

  Powerful, Fear, Home

  "The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", radio broadcast to the United States and to London, October 16, 1938.

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.

  Salman Rushdie

  Glamour, Underestimated

  "Imran is Dim, says Salman Rushdie at the India Today Conclave". "India Today Conclave" with Aroon Purie, indiatoday.intoday.in. March 17, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.

  Tryon Edwards

  Death, May, Bread

  Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.1004, Ravenio Books

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• While forbidden fruit is said to taste sweeter, it usually spoils faster.

  Abigail Van Buren

  Risk, Taste, Fruit

  74 Copy quote

• For us, holding on to religious rules, and following them, and refraining from what's forbidden, and being diligent with our duties, what do we call that? That's what we call freedom.

  Muqtada al Sadr

  Religious, Holding On, Duty

  7 Copy quote

• Do not share the knowledge with which you have been blessed with everyone in general, as you do with some people in particular; and know that there are some men in whom Allah, may He he glorified, has placed hidden secrets, which they are forbidden to reveal.

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Blessed, Men, People

  36 Copy quote

• The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

  Amy Tan

  Reading, Influence, Catchers

  "Author of The Joy Luck Club". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Pregnancy, Science

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.

  Quintilian

  Desire, Pleasure, Forbidden Fruit

  "Declamationes". Book by Quintilian,

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.

  Boris Pasternak

  Doctors, Dear God, Stomach

  13 Copy quote

• It was almost forbidden in the Soviet Union to study the New Economic Policy.

  Anatoly Chubais

  Unions, Study, Economic

  7 Copy quote

• I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden.

  Lars von Trier

  Strong, Home, Emotion

  7 Copy quote

• Yet, so far from laboring to know the forbidden tree of worldly pleasures and its various fruits, man gives himself up to a careless and thoughtless state of life, and yields to the lust of the flesh, not considering that this lust is really the forbidden tree.

  Johann Arndt

  Men, Yield, Giving

  Johann Arndt (1868). “True Christianity: A Treatise on Sincere Repentance, True Faith, the Holy Walk of the True Christian, Etc”, p.51

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• It doesnt seem to me strange that children should like the macabre, the sensational, and the forbidden.

  Anthony Hecht

  Children, Strange, Should

  29 Copy quote

• Check bags are fun. I just make sure there won't be anything illegal in my check bag which is forbidden at a cabin of a plane. Just leaving things like scissors and such out of my carry-on things in order to avoid troubles with some certain airline, y'know.

  Kerry King

  Fun, Order, Leaving

  8 Copy quote

• When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it.

  Ken Kesey

  Powerful, Ghouls, Firsts

  16 Copy quote

• Just carrying a ruler with you in your pocket should be forbidden, at least on a moral basis. The ruler is the symbol of the new illiteracy. The ruler is the symptom of the new disease, disintegration of our civilisation.

  Friedensreich Hundertwasser

  Pockets, Disease, Moral

  25 Copy quote

• The people are forbidden to give aid and comfort to rebels. What of a government that has the power to cut off from aid and comfort all the rebels of the South and fails to exercise it?

  Robert Dale Owen

  Cutting, Exercise, Government

  7 Copy quote

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

  Ovid

  Desire, Coveting, Strive

  36 Copy quote

• To make our morality center on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow men a secret element of gusto.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Imagination, Secret

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1900). “A Christmas Sermon”, p.6, Library of Alexandria

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes what we call love is just a settling of old scores, or a seeking of forbidden pain, or a circuitous path to the kingdom of cruelty, or she may simply have confused lack of capital with heroism while searching for rescue without knowing from what.

  Anne Roiphe

  Pain, Confused, Love Is

  Anne Roiphe (1999). “1185 Park Avenue”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

  Show source