Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Book ·34 of 348
"Beauty will save the world."
They never said that.
What people say
"Beauty will save the world."
What was actually said
"Is it true, prince, that you once declared that ‘beauty would save the world'? Great Heaven! The prince says that beauty saves the world!" Ippolit, then Aglaya, asking about Prince Myshkin — The Idiot, Part III (1869)
Why it stuck
Dostoevsky never has Myshkin actually say the line. Two other characters report it as something Myshkin supposedly said. The line is a quotation of a quotation, and nobody in the novel can confirm it was said at all.
Solzhenitsyn's 1970 Nobel lecture used the phrase as though Dostoevsky had endorsed it. The Idiot's narrative layering is much slipperier.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.