"Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo

"So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age-the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night-are not solved; so long as ignorance and misery remain …

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