Exodus 20:2-17 Quotes
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Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image […]. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; […] Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work […]. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
Context
These are the often imitated, never duplicated thou shalts and thou shalt nots from the Ten Commandments.
God speaks 'em to Moses when he goes up to Mount Sinai amid fire and smoke and earthquakes. Their simple, repetitive structure makes them almost as hard to forget as they sometimes are to keep.
Where you've heard it
Just putting the words "thou shalt not" in front of something gives them a certain weight, doesn't it? "No cuts, no butts, no coconuts" just doesn't have the gravitas of "Thou shalt not cut, thou shalt not butt, thou shalt not coconut."
We're not the first to notice this. "Thou shalt not"s get thrown around all the time.
You can't escape them. Thou shalt not even try.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
Since this quote comes from one of the oldest legal codes around, it's lost its pretension and has simply become a cheeky way of saying "don't." So thou shalt not worry about using it whenever thy heart doth desire.