“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.”

— Mark Twain, book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Variant: 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.
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 22.

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Mark Twain637

American author and humorist 1835–1910

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