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One can touch a living soul through a curtain of vice and crime no matter how dense and dark: but vulgarity is an insurmountable barrier.

— François Mauriac Le Nœud de vipères (1932)

On atteint aisément une âme vivante à travers les crimes, les vices les plus tristes, mais la vulgarité est infranchissable.

Original text (French)

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Source: Le Nœud de vipères (1932), cited from Oeuvres romanesques, vol. 2 (Paris: Flammarion, 1965) p. 190; Gerard Hopkins (trans.) Knot of Vipers (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1985) p. 193.
Work: Le Nœud de vipères, 1932
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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