11 Madame de Staël (1766–1817) said in Corinne (1807), bk. 18, ch. 5, ‘Tout comprendre rend très indulgen’ (‘To understand everything makes one very indulgent’). There are two similar phrases, ‘Comprendre c’est pardonner’ (‘To understand is to forgive’) and ‘Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner’ (‘To understand everything is to forgive everything’) which are attributed to Madame de Staël but are not found in her works. The phrases are probably misquotations of–or indeed improvements on–the sentence in Corinne.