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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “You can’t eat your cake and still have it, too”. My comments: In other words, you can’t have it both ways. Both ways? Yeah, both this way and that way, although they’re two obviously different ways. Teachers always tell students, for instance, to work hard so that they’ll have good grades come examination time. You can’t play all the time and expect to have good grades. Can’t have it both ways, i.e. can’t have two incompatible things at the same time. Moms tell their children “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too”, because kids want to do that all the time. “Cake” may be a metaphor or may not be a piece of real cake, which is, or at least used to be something of a luxury, something precious. For our purpose, let’s take the “cake” for real. Visualize a mother setting down the cake on the table while telling the child: “Go easy. Don’t eat it all at once (so that you’ll have something nice for dinner as well).” The child wants to gobble it all now – and yet, of course, they want to have more cake to eat at dinner (and perhaps some more for tomorrow). Can’t happen, of course. Once you eat the cake, the cake is gone. Won’t be there – Can’t eat it all and still have it sitting invitingly on the table. In other words, any course of action leads to its own consequences – can’t have the action and not have its consequences as well. | 
