We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

Balzac’s remark points to a psychological habit: in narrating our lives—to ourselves and to others—we tend to heighten both suffering and joy. The quote suggests that emotional self-reporting is often performative and comparative, shaped by pride, self-pity, or the desire for sympathy and recognition. By insisting we are “never as bad off or as happy” as we claim, it implies a corrective toward proportion and realism: circumstances are usually more mixed, and feelings more transient, than our dramatic summaries admit. In a Balzacian world of social ambition and disappointment, the line also hints at how language can distort experience, turning ordinary fluctuations into melodrama.