“you sir are a gentleman and a scholar” what movie is this from? weve heard it from the office?

7 Answers

• It sounds like something that Sydney Greenstreet says in “The Maltese Falcon”, but I’m not positive.

  I did find this in an unusual place:

  Confucianism

  The Far East also held similar ideas to the West of what a “gentleman” is, which are based on Confucian principles. The term “Jūnzǐ” is a term crucial to classical Confucianism. Literally meaning “son of a ruler”, “prince” or “noble”, the ideal of a “gentleman”, “proper man”, “exemplary person” or “perfect man” is that for which Confucianism exhorts all people to strive. A succinct description of the “perfect man” is one who “combine[s] the qualities of saint, scholar, and gentleman”. (In modern times, the masculine bias in Confucianism may have weakened, but the same term is still used; the masculine translation in English is also traditional and still frequently used.) A hereditary elitism was bound up with the concept, and gentlemen were expected to act as moral guides to the rest of society.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman

  So, this basic statement likely is spoken by someone with a certain awareness. I keep “hearing” it in Sydney Greenstreet’s voice, which makes me think of “The Maltese Fountain” or “Casablanca” though Greenstreet was a busy actor, generally playing well-educated types.

  I’ve found this, too:

  “He’s too much a gentleman to be a scholar.”~Aphra Behn

  WOW! That quote IS everywhere, but no one lists a source; thus, it has slipped into the language. It’s true that it might be used in a number of films, too.

  Perhaps I can do some more research later.

• Oldest examples I know of are Shakespeare plays. In Twelfth Night, Sir Toby Belch is trying to be a solid wing man, and assures a woman that his friend sire Andrew is both a gentleman and a scholar. This would have been about 1601, and that is the oldest example I know of off hand, however it may predate even that, but it is in various of Shakespeare’s works..

• Grey Man is closest. It’s from Hamlet.

• RE:

  “you sir are a gentleman and a scholar” what movie is this from? weve heard it from the office?

  Please help! what is this quote from?? I know I heard it from the office, season one, but what did they take it from? many thanks!!

• I believe it came from William Shakespeare’s play “The Puritaine Widdow”.

• I don’t think it’s from any movie. If it was used in a movie, it probably isn’t an original line. That saying has been said for many decades.

• its from catcher in the rye