To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to’t
 Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580). copy citation

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Author Michel de Montaigne
Source The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Topic censorship encouragement forbidding
Date 1580
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Charles Cotton
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm

Context

“Our appetite contemns and passes by what it has in possession, to run after that it has not:
«Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.» [«He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her who flees from him.» —Horace, Sat., i. 2, 108.]
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't: «Nisi to servare puellam Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:» [«Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin to be no longer mine.» —Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 47.]
to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt.” source

Meaning and analysis

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