Origin of "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner"?

Question

"If you are aware of all the circumstances, you will forgive everything." I have found attributions to "a New Testament (female) saint," "Madame de Stael," "Spinoza," and "French oral tradition." But I need an exact citation.

Vamp · Accepted Answer

This actual wording is first recorded in War and Peace (Tolstoy) 1868.

The problem is that different wordings with very similar meanings abound and therefore the likelihood is that it was a commonplace expression rather than a coining by Tolstoy.

Spinoza was a Dutch scholar so it seems unlikely that he would have been writing in French (He wrote his books in Latin - then the international language of scholarship)
The NT female saint is unlikely as, even in translation, this does not match any part of the New Testament.
The de Stael is the most common attribution but her wording is slightly different.

peters · Answer

C Est Tu

Origin of "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner"?

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