Can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Lt.Zero]

Now, riddle me this. I've heard the phrase 'You can't have your cake and eat it too.' What the hell is the point in having my cake if I can't eat it as well.

[Phobia]

Well, the saying actually doesn't refer to cake itself. It could be made to refer to cake...but for the most part it doesn't.

What it means is something along the lines that you can't have something extremely good, or do something worthwhile then expect to be praised for it all the time. At least that's how I perceive it to be, but I never use that saying...I'm always tellin' people to "lay off muh kool-aid!" lol.

But yea...that's..the..gist of it I guess.

[Albert Flasher]

[COLOR=Sienna]The point is, if you eat your cake than you no longer have it, which means you can't have your cake and eat it too. [/COLOR]

[Kisa_girl_chan]

I agree with them. It simply means you can't have everything and be happy, though I wish you could.

[vegeta rocker]

First off, you're means you are; stuff like that kind of bugs me.
Your is posessive which is the word you should have used.

The phrase basically means you can't have everything. Relating it to a real life situation is a guy having a girlfriend with someone on the side to get nookie from every now and then.

[Touchstone]

That is one of the stupidest phrases ever; ranks up there in my book with "a penny saved is a penny earned." It has no meaning! AAAHHGG! A stupid little sentence that can't possibly sum up the complexities of life-oh, the humanity, the degradation of the written word! :animecry:

(I hope you know I was kidding;))

Anyways, yeah, it basically means not to be greedy. Always makes me think of Marie Antoinette. Damn another false saying! ...She never said "Let them eat cake!"

[Charles]

[QUOTE=vegeta rocker]First off, you're means you are; stuff like that kind of bugs me.
Your is posessive which is the word you should have used.

The phrase basically means you can't have everything. Relating it to a real life situation is a guy having a girlfriend with someone on the side to get nookie from every now and then.[/QUOTE]


I'm glad you thought your little grammar lesson was important enough to disrupt the thread for.

Anyway, to the thread starter--it's important not to take colloquial expressions too literally. As has been said, it's just an informal way of saying you can't have everything you want. It's that simple.

[Corey]

[size=1]You could look at it with more of a spiritual eye.

If I have my cake, then eat it, the cake is now a part of me.
Hence still having my cake, after eating it, even though said cake is no longer visible.[/size]

[Momiji Love]

[QUOTE=Corey][size=1]You could look at it with more of a spiritual eye.

If I have my cake, then eat it, the cake is now a part of me.
Hence still having my cake, after eating it, even though said cake is no longer visible.[/size][/QUOTE]

[FONT=Veranda][SIZE=1][COLOR=DarkSlateBlue][CENTER]Yeah. Either that or just buy/bake two cakes.
You can eat one, and then just have the other.To stare at all day.

Actually, I think its just a stupid way of saying that you can have some things but not every thing you want.[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR][/CENTER]

[vegeta rocker]

Well i didn't mean to disrupt the thread so i am sorry if i did. My dad was just a stickler for stuff like that and i guess it just got passed on to me.

Back on topic, I agree with saying it is a ridiculous saying. As for the Marie A. thing i don't know if it was false or not. I was always taught she did say that but history is proved wrong everyday.

But its funny because she wasn't talking about cake in the way most people thought she was. Cake was what they called the black bits that burned off bread and fell into and around the furnace when people baked it. So it is a pretty cruel thing to think about it.

[DeathKnight]

[QUOTE=Corey][size=1]You could look at it with more of a spiritual eye.

If I have my cake, then eat it, the cake is now a part of me.
Hence still having my cake, after eating it, even though said cake is no longer visible.[/size][/QUOTE]

[img]http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/7319/coreytranscendsallknowledge1md.jpg[/img]

[quote name='vegeta rocker']Back on topic, I agree with saying it is a ridiculous saying.[/quote]

[color=crimson]Most sayings would be if you overanalyzed them/take them too literally, lol. It's simply trying to give you a visualization that you can't have everything you want/desire as has been said several times over.

No, the cake the quote is referring to was simply a type of French bread that had less flour. Mary Antoinette was actually pretty sympathetic with the plight of her people once the scale of the bread shortage was known.[/color]

[Claire]

[FONT=Arial]What's the point of having a cake if you don't eat it? It's just going to sit there for all eternity, molding and rotting and becoming even more useless than before. If you're going to have cake just to have cake, you might as well ship it to India, cos' people are starving over there.

I don't even like cake. Maybe we should change it to muffins or Chinese restaraunt. Bah! I don't care, I'm going to both have cake and eat it, and still have it, because I do what I want.

I suppose cake is a metaphor for baby. You can't have a baby, then eat it. (Actually you can, but you shouldn't). They put people in the electric chair for that.

Anyways, the phrase has been logically dissected and proven, I guess.[/FONT]

[Raiyuu]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS]Yes indeed. I think we've milked all possible discussion out of someone's misunderstanding of a saying. We can only go in circles from here.

[B][strike]Circle broken[/strike] Thread closed.[/B][/FONT]