A strange people, for whom it is out of the question that anyone can be moral without reading the Bible, and strong without playing cricket, and a gentleman without being English! And it is this that makes them so detested. They never fuse, they never lose their Englishness.

Estranha gente, para quem é fora de dúvida que ninguém pode ser moral sem ler a Bíblia, ser forte sem jogar o críquete e ser gentleman sem ser inglês! E é isto que os torna detestados. Nunca se fundem, nunca se desinglesam.

Original text (Spanish)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: José Maria Eça de Queiroz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.