
“The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.”
Leo
1900s, Getting Married (1908)
This is generally reported as a French proverb, and one familiar as such in Russia as well, in many 19th and 20th century works; it seems to have first become attributed to Gautama Buddha without citation of sources in Farm Journal, Vol. 34 (1910), p. 417
Misattributed
“The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.”
Leo
1900s, Getting Married (1908)
“Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender”
Source: Eat, Pray, Love
Not a Kerouac quote, but by the Indian spiritual leader, Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007).
Misattributed
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
Source: The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
“By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream”
“God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling…”
Source: Anna Karenina
“In general, those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.”
D'ordinaire, ceux qui gouvernent les enfants ne leur pardonnent rien, et se pardonnent tout à eux-mêmes.
Traité de l'éducation des filles, ch. 5, cited from De l'éducation des filles, dialogues des morts et opuscules divers (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1857) p. 15; translation from Selections from the Writings of Fénelon (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little and Wilkins, 1829) p. 137. (1687).