'It Is Best to Know as Little as Possible'

One seemingly reliable authority attributes the proverb to Madame De Staël. Others leave it inconclusively at “The French have a proverb . . . .” Yet another strains credulity and credits Evelyn Waugh. I first heard it from a New Age cultist in the early nineteen-eighties: “To know all is to forgive all.” My source was a patchouli-scented fossil of 1967 who delivered the platitude with withering smugness. I was supposed to be grateful just to share space with Aristotle.

I like proverbs and their lineal descendants, aphorisms, maxims and apothegms. Much in little is always artful. But the “to-know-all” tag is soggy reasoning, a cliché worthy of Emerson. The Hitler option comes to mind: If I knew everything about Hitler I would forgive him. Impossible. Besides, I have no interest in understanding or forgiving Hitler. I’m happy that he failed and that he’s dead and that’s the end of it. He’s hardly the only person who will never be forgiven.

Ivy Compton-Burnett was another dissenter from the proverb’s purported wisdom. In her 1937 novel Daughters and Sons, she has Miss Marcon say: “But families can seldom be explained, and they make better gossip without any explanation. To know all is to forgive all, and that would spoil everything.” Think how dull life would be if we forgave everyone.

Two decades later, in A Heritage and Its History (1959), Compton-Burnett, ever the realist, is still dispensing with the sentimental tripe:

“‘Ah, to know all is to forgive all,’ said Rhoda.

The butler, Deakin, replies:

“‘I confess I have not found it so, my lady. To forgive, it is best to know as little as possible.’”

[It seems Nige has also been reading Ivy Compton-Burnett again.]