We might have been ready to ...

We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.
We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.
 Alain de Botton

Quotes from the same author

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.
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 Alain de Botton
Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
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 Alain de Botton
When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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 Alain de Botton
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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 Alain de Botton
It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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 Alain de Botton