Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.
(To know all is forgive all.)
French Proverb.
This proverb is said to have originated from a sentence in Mme. de Staël’s Corinne, Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent, “Understanding everything makes one very forgiving.”
The true life of the human community is planted deep in the private affections of its members; in the greatness of its individual minds; in the pure severities of its domestic conscience; in the noble and transforming thoughts that fertilize its sacred nooks. Who can observe, without astonishment, the durable action of men truly great on the history of the world, and the evanescence of vast military revolutions, once threatening all things with destruction? How often is it the fate of the former to be invisible for an age, and then live for ever; of the latter, to sweep a generation from the earth, and then vanish with slight trace?
James Martineau (The Outer and the Inner Temple).
Wars seem to leave little trace except where they result in the immigration and settlement of a tribe or nation. Otherwise they appear to cancel one another. The present war will probably destroy the only trace of the Franco-Prussian war, and, with respect to Turkey, Poland, and other countries, will no doubt cancel the effects of many tremendous conflicts of past centuries.