“There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding.”
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Marilynne Robinson 51
American novelist and essayist 1943Related quotes

“To understand is to forgive.”

“To understand all is to forgive all.”
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“To understand everything is to forgive everything.”
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)