Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

Balzac’s line distills a psychological truth: suffering is often generated less by events than by the mind’s rehearsal of them. “Worst misfortunes” points to the catastrophes we imagine—ruin, disgrace, abandonment—that frequently never materialize. Meanwhile, “most miseries lie in anticipation” suggests that anxiety, dread, and rumination can become a self-inflicted torment, consuming the present with hypothetical futures. The remark aligns with a broader moral tradition (from Stoic thought to modern cognitive psychology) that treats fear of loss as a major source of unhappiness and urges attention to what is real and immediate rather than what is merely projected.