Good Heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.

This line is spoken by Monsieur Jourdain in Molière’s comedy-ballet *Le Bourgeois gentilhomme* (1670). Jourdain, a wealthy but socially insecure bourgeois, hires various “masters” (of music, dance, fencing, and philosophy) to teach him the refinements of aristocratic culture. In a famous lesson, the philosophy master explains the difference between verse and prose. Jourdain is astonished to learn that ordinary, everyday speech is “prose,” and he exclaims that he has been speaking it all his life without realizing it. The joke targets pretension and the comic gap between genuine understanding and fashionable jargon.

The humor turns on a paradox: Jourdain treats a basic fact—ordinary speech is prose—as a profound discovery. Molière uses this to satirize social climbing and the way technical labels can make the familiar seem prestigious or mysterious. The line also suggests a broader point about self-knowledge: people often practice skills or inhabit identities without conscious awareness until someone supplies a name for them. In literary terms, it playfully demystifies “prose” by showing it is not an elevated art reserved for experts but the default medium of daily life—while also mocking those who confuse terminology with true cultivation.

• “Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it!”
• “Good Lord! I’ve been speaking prose for over forty years and never knew it.”
• “Bless me! I’ve spoken prose these forty years without being aware of it.”