De Tocqueville was profoundly impressed by this truth.

He entertained the opinion that man could have no such mainstay in life as the companionship of a wife of good temper and high principle.

He says that in the course of his life, he had seen even weak men display real public virtue, because they had by their side a woman of noble character, who sustained them in their career, and exercised a fortifying influence on their views of public duty; whilst, on the contrary, he had still oftener seen men of great and generous instincts transformed into vulgar self-seekers, by contact with women of narrow natures, devoted to an imbecile love of pleasure, and from whose minds the grand motive of Duty was altogether absent.
De Tocqueville himself had the good fortune to be blessed with an admirable wife: [2010] and in his letters to his intimate friends, he spoke most gratefully of the comfort and support he derived from her sustaining courage, her equanimity of temper, and her nobility of character.

The more, indeed, that De Tocqueville saw of the world and of practical life, the more convinced he became of the necessity of healthy domestic conditions for a man's growth in virtue and goodness.

[2011] Especially did he regard marriage as of inestimable importance in regard to a man's true happiness; and he was accustomed to speak of his own as the wisest action of his life.