Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman.

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.

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.

No state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of) ... that no check whatever has existed to early marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life.

It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.

The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.

A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.