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Quote#Kindness

If any fact was clear amid the bewildering confusion of the French…

Quote byRobert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury · 1830–1903

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: 'Stanhope's Life of Pitt', Quarterly Review, vol. 111 (January & April 1862), pp. 538-539.

English (original)

If any fact was clear amid the bewildering confusion of the French Revolution, it was that the gentleness, the concessions, the morbid tenderness of Louis XVI had only tended to precipitate his own and his people's doom, and aggravate the ferocity of those he tried by kindness to disarm.

— Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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