Meaning & Analysis
People are naturally drawn to desire things that are prohibited, restricted, or considered harmful.
Insights
Psychological Rebellion
This proverb reflects the intrinsic human tendency to rebel against constraints. The act of forbidding something paradoxically intensifies its allure, provoking an urge to defy imposed boundaries.
Temptation and Transgression
Highlights the powerful allure of the forbidden, positioning prohibition as a catalyst for temptation and, ultimately, transgression. What is forbidden often acquires a heightened sense of value or excitement.
Desire’s Contradiction
Underscores the paradoxical nature of desire: the more inaccessible or harmful something is, the more it can captivate and obsess, revealing the irrational and sometimes self-destructive side of human longing.
Historical Symbolism
The theme of forbidden desire is deeply rooted in Western cultural consciousness, exemplified by the biblical narrative of the forbidden fruit in Eden and recurring motifs in classical literature and folklore. The notion that restriction breeds desire is a universal psychological and cultural observation.
Literary and Cultural Resonance
Shakespeare’s lines and numerous early modern quotations evoke a vivid image: humans, like 'rats that ravin down their proper bane,' are compelled toward self-destruction by the very things they are denied. This motif recurs in works as varied as Milton’s 'Paradise Lost' and Goethe’s 'Faust.'
Psychological Dimensions
The proverb exposes psychological mechanisms such as reactance (resistance to restriction) and the allure of taboo. Social and parental prohibitions may fuel curiosity, leading individuals—especially the young or restless—to seek out that which is most stringently forbidden, often at their own peril.
Rhetorical Devices
Paradox
Centers on the paradox that the act of forbidding something can itself create or intensify desire for it, inverting conventional expectations about prohibition and obedience.
Allusion
Alludes to foundational stories (e.g., the Fall in Genesis) and classical motifs of temptation and punishment, providing depth and resonance across eras.
Metaphor
Equates the forbidden with 'bane'—poison—casting desire for it as self-destructive, as in the metaphor of 'rats' consuming poison despite the consequences.
Transcription
Quotations
Mans desire is kindled through things forbidden.
For our nature is to run upon that which is forbidden us; vices the more prohibited, the more provoked.
Besides that, we naturallye are desirous of thinges whiche are forbidden us.
We desire most the thing forbidden vs.
Forbid a thing and that we wil do.
Forbidding is cause of desire.
Let it be lawful to make use, ye powers, Of human weakness, that pursueth still What is inhibited.
Would virtue had been forbidden, we should then haue prooued all vertuous, for tis our bloude to loue what wee are forbidden.
We couet most what we are most forbidden.
So (gens humana ruit in vetitum nefas) Mans nature praecipitates it selfe into forbidden wickedness.
As pride or lust does minds unstaiid and wan-ton: 'T makes men like poison'd rats, which when they 've swallow'd The pleasing bane, rest not until they drink, And can rest then much less, until they burst with't.
Men are most mad of, what is forbidden.
Shakespeare Citations
Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil, and when we drink we die.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.