A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

The love of independence is a sentiment that surely none would wish to see erased from the breast of man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.

It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.

No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed.

Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.

To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.