What is the difference between the following sentences?
As much as I admire him for his sterling qualities, I cannot excuse him for being unfair to his friends.
Much as I admire him for his sterling qualities, I cannot excuse him for being unfair to his friends.
Answer
They describe almost the opposite relationship between the two things.
As much as I admire him for his sterling qualities, I cannot excuse him for being unfair to his friends.
Here, “as much as” means “even though”. Essentially, it means that my admiring someone would make you think I could excuse them, but I cannot. That is, it shows a conflict between two truths. Since these things do conflict, we might excuse unfairness from those we admire, this makes sense.
Much as I admire him for his sterling qualities, I cannot excuse him for being unfair to his friends.
Here, “much as” means “in about the same way”. Essentially, this means that I admire him and in the same way, cannot excuse his unfairness. Since these two things don’t really seem equivalent, it’s hard to see how this would make sense.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Darshi , Answer Author : David Schwartz
