# Balzac's most famous lines

'It's between the two of us now!', the forgotten crime behind great fortunes, glory as the sun of the dead: the most quoted lines from The Human Comedy, with the novel they come from, and the distorted version that goes round.

- 5 votes · 13 items
- Jan 25, 2026 · quebecepicurien
- https://even.best/en/l/4702/balzac-s-most-famous-lines

## Top 13

1. **It's between the two of us now!** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Father Goriot (1835), Rastignac facing Paris at the end of the novel.
2. **The secret of great fortunes with no apparent cause is a forgotten crime, because it was neatly done.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Father Goriot (1835), Vautrin.
3. **Laws are spider's webs through which the big flies pass and in which the little ones get caught.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Firm of Nucingen (1838).
4. **Love is the only passion that tolerates neither past nor future.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Chouans (1829).
5. **Despotism does great things illegally; liberty does not even bother to do very small things legally.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Wild Ass's Skin (1831).
6. **Glory is the sun of the dead.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Quest of the Absolute (1834).
7. **All the horrors that novelists think they invent always fall short of the truth.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Colonel Chabert (1832).
8. **We went looking for wool and we are coming back shorn.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Chouans (1829).
9. **If light is the first love of life, is not love the light of the heart?** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Eugénie Grandet (1833).
10. **Is not the fool the one who fails to justify the good opinion he has of himself?** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Country Doctor (1833).
11. **Self-love is a swindler who never misses his dupe.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Old Maid (1836).
12. **In France, the most national thing of all is vanity.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Collection of Antiquities (1839).
13. **Behind every great fortune there is a crime.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Distorted version that goes round: Balzac wrote Vautrin's line about the 'forgotten crime', not this one.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.