Quiz: Making Amends
| Well, obviously there’s rancor in the air – how could there not be? The Open Letters Quiz may have had the most playful and innocent of intentions with last month’s April Fool’s quiz, but nevertheless, sacred relations have been strained and frayed, and once again some healing is necessary. The last time healing was needed in the Quiz, the sticky subject in question was nothing less than love, and an attempt was made to bind the wounds of three months of invidious mudslinging. This time around, for obvious reasons, the key concept is trust, is a respect for the truth, a re-commitment to honesty. So with these watchwords clutched to our bosoms, let us march onward, toward yet more Quiz-healing (and as always, email answers to quiz [at] openlettersmonthly [dot] com): |  |
1. The Declaration of Independence states, “we hold these truths to be self-evident” – without ‘refreshing your memory’ at any wiki-media, recite which truths those are (bonus points if you can do this and are an American)
2. On his deathbed, what famous personage is alleged to have said that he felt as if “the great ocean of truth” lay all undiscovered before him?
3. What vile wretch – obviously not in step with our healing voyage here – once quipped “It’s better to be quotable than honest”?
4. An honest tale speeds best being plainly told,” writes Shakespeare – in which (most unlikely, all things being considered) play?
5. Who was it who said – in a humor not much better than #3’s – “Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth”?
6. In American letters, who gets this grudging note of support, and from what unlikely source? “There was things that he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”
7. “My way of joking is to tell the truth,” said somebody who might therefore have a lot to teach the repentant Open Letters Quiz … who was this virtuous savant?
8. Who instructed us all to “seek for the truth in the groves of Academe” – perhaps because, for a brief interlude, he could not find it in the Open Letters Quiz?
9. What poet consoles those who feel they’ve been shafted by writing, “Truth never is undone;/Its shafts remain”?
10. And lastly, in a tremulous note of hope for future Quizzes, we turn to a great sage who wrote, “who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” Name the sage, and then depart in peace.
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