"Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes"
About this Quote
Porter is needling the culture with the polished weapon he knew best: elegance. The line lands because it’s a complaint dressed up as a rhyme, a moral critique that pretends to be merely observational. “Good authors, too” is the slyest jab of all: he isn’t talking about hacks corrupting language, but the respectable crowd willingly lowering the bar. That “too” turns a private irritation into a diagnosis of the whole ecosystem.
The four-letter word isn’t just profanity; it’s shorthand for a broader impatience with subtlety. Porter built songs on innuendo, internal rhyme, and a kind of aristocratic precision that made desire sound civilized. So when he hears prose trading in blunt-force diction, he’s not only mourning manners, he’s warning about the flattening of taste. The phrase “once knew better words” implies a fall from grace, not ignorance: writers are choosing the cheap thrill over the hard work of style.
Context matters. Porter came up in a prewar Broadway and cabaret world that prized wit as social currency, then watched mid-century America tilt toward mass markets, louder realism, and a growing comfort with the explicit. “Anything goes” is a pointed self-quotation from his own hit, now repurposed as an alarm bell. The genius is the self-implication: the man who helped popularize permissiveness is now squinting at what permissiveness becomes when it stops being playful and turns into a default setting.
The four-letter word isn’t just profanity; it’s shorthand for a broader impatience with subtlety. Porter built songs on innuendo, internal rhyme, and a kind of aristocratic precision that made desire sound civilized. So when he hears prose trading in blunt-force diction, he’s not only mourning manners, he’s warning about the flattening of taste. The phrase “once knew better words” implies a fall from grace, not ignorance: writers are choosing the cheap thrill over the hard work of style.
Context matters. Porter came up in a prewar Broadway and cabaret world that prized wit as social currency, then watched mid-century America tilt toward mass markets, louder realism, and a growing comfort with the explicit. “Anything goes” is a pointed self-quotation from his own hit, now repurposed as an alarm bell. The genius is the self-implication: the man who helped popularize permissiveness is now squinting at what permissiveness becomes when it stops being playful and turns into a default setting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | "Anything Goes" (song lyric), Cole Porter, 1934 — lyric lines: "Good authors too, who once knew better words / Now only use four-letter words writing prose..." |
More Quotes by Cole
Add to List
