Original text: La France est la plus brillante et la plus dangereuse des nations de l'Europe, et la mieux faite pour y devenir tour à tour un objet d'admiration, de haine, de pitié, de terreur, mais jamais d'indifférence.
Variant translation: The French constitute the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.
Old Regime (1856), p. 245 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA254&vq=%22the+most+brilliant+and+the+most+dangerous%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
1850s and later
“A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.”
Ariel (1923)
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André Maurois 202
French writer 1885–1967Related quotes
“Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious.”
The Hidden Stream (1952). London: Burns Oates, p. 105
Often misquoted as "The study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious."
Context: I suppose there has been no subtler attack upon the Christian faith devised by its enemies in these last hundred years than the attack made in the name of "comparative religion". If you pick up a book on "Atonement", and plough your way through ideas of atonement among primitive tribes, pagan ideas of atonement, Jewish ideas of atonement, Christian ideas of atonement, you will find by the end of it that atonement, for the author's mind, has ceased to have any meaning. And he has been successful, in so far as he has managed to infect your mind with the wooliness which is the leading characteristic of his own. Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious.
“Children need admiration rather than affection.”
Advice to Clever Children (1981)
Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)
“Recipes are just descriptions of one person’s take on one moment in time. They’re not rules.”
“It becomes all men, Senators, who deliberate on dubious matters, to be influenced neither by hatred, affection, anger, nor pity.”
Omnes homines, patres conscripti, qui de rebus dubiis consultant, ab odio, amicitia, ira atque misericordia vacuos esse decet.
Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter LI, section 1