For, as Cleinias says, every law should have a suitable prelude.
CLEINIAS: You recollect at the right moment, Stranger, and do not miss the opportunity which the argument affords of saying a word in season.
ATHENIAN: I thank you.

We will say to him who is born of good parents--O my son, you ought to make such a marriage as wise men would approve.

Now they would advise you neither to avoid a poor marriage, nor specially to desire a rich one; but if other things are equal, always to honour inferiors, and with them to form connexions;--this will be for the benefit of the city and of the families which are united; for the equable and symmetrical tends infinitely more to virtue than the unmixed.

And he who is conscious of being too headstrong, and carried away more than is fitting in all his actions, ought to desire to become the relation of orderly parents; and he who is of the opposite temper ought to seek the opposite alliance.

Let there be one word concerning all marriages:--Every man shall follow, not after the marriage which is most pleasing to himself, but after that which is most beneficial to the state.