Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

Balzac’s image of laws as “spider webs” belongs to his broader, recurring critique of Restoration- and July Monarchy–era French society, in which wealth, status, and connections often determined how justice was applied. Across La Comédie humaine he repeatedly depicts courts, police, and administrative systems as formally impartial yet practically permeable to influence—especially for financiers, aristocrats, and politically protected figures—while the poor and socially marginal bear the brunt of enforcement. The aphorism is typically cited as a distilled observation from this social panorama rather than as a line tied to a single famous speech or public occasion.

Balzac’s image likens the legal system to a spider web: intricate, ostensibly impartial, and designed to ensnare. Yet in practice, he suggests, it catches only those without power—“the little ones”—while the wealthy or influential—“the big flies”—break through or avoid entanglement altogether. The aphorism crystallizes a recurring theme in Balzac’s social vision: institutions that claim universality often operate as mechanisms that reproduce hierarchy. It is less a rejection of law in principle than an indictment of unequal enforcement, selective prosecution, and the ability of privilege to purchase skilled advocacy, influence, or exceptions.