"It was a peculiarity of Smiley’s character that throughout the whole of his clandestine work he had never managed to reconcile the means to the end. A stringent critic of his own motives, he had discovered after long observation that he tended to be less a creature of intellect than his tastes and habits might suggest; once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust."
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Original Language: English
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Chapter 9, “The Mourners” (p. 74)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_le_Carr%C3%A9
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John le Carré
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