Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and touching thing.
 Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862). copy citation

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Author Victor Hugo
Source Les Misérables
Topic despair hope
Date 1862
Language English
Reference
Note Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood in 1887
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/135/135-h/135-h.htm

Context

“He looked at it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a frightful shoe of the coarsest description, half dilapidated and all covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette’s sabot. Cosette, with that touching trust of childhood, which can always be deceived yet never discouraged, had placed her shoe on the hearth-stone also. Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and touching thing. There was nothing in this wooden shoe. The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over and placed a louis d’or in Cosette’s shoe. Then he regained his own chamber with the stealthy tread of a wolf.” source