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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/7/2009
Posts: 33,204
Neurons: 98,790
Location: Inside Farlex computers
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 He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/26/2013
Posts: 3,465
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Location: Minsk, Minskaya Voblasts', Belarus
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Thing must flutter on the borderline of possible and impossible in order to be desirable. It's understandable, though, when small boy yet don't know that rather adult stuff.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 2/9/2010
Posts: 104
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Location: Tunisia
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Well, I think it's limited to some kind of humans.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 5,408
Neurons: 87,618
Location: Drain, Oregon, United States
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This is from the story about Tom Sawyer, a boy given the chore (work for a child) of whitewashing (painting) the fence around his aunt's house. Tom did not want to do this. As his friends passed by (on their way to fishing or playing games), he talked with them about how lucky he (Tom) was to have this fence to whitewash; how it was just the best thing in the world to do on a summer day.
The other boys thought they must surely want a chance at this grand activity and began to beg Tom to let them paint some of the fence. He said he couldn't possibly do that. The other boys then began to offer bribes, toys and small amounts of money they had with them. The upshot was he did none of the painting:
Quote:He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while – plenty of company – and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 10/3/2012
Posts: 2,247
Neurons: 248,987
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Daemon wrote:He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. Mark Twain (1835-1910) The man and the boy will covet the thing even more because it's the latest, more expensive, model; no attainment is necessary, he just got to have it, never mind if it's attainable!
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