Owen Frank - Who Said That?: Take the Quote Quiz Challenge

Owen Frank Take the Quote Quiz Challenge Workman Publishing New York Contents Introduction Growing Up Mini-Game: Finish the Quote Love & Marriage Mini-Game: out of context Work & Money Mini-Game: Reverso! Politics & War Mini-Game: The Scuttlebutt Motivation Mini-Game: isms Aging Mini-Game: Head-to-Head Wisdom & Miscellany Acknowledgments Introduction I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. Ralph Waldo Emerson F or as long as people have used words, people have borrowed words. Among all the things someone might borrow, quotations are unique: They cant be used up. Unlike, say, vinyl records or classic cars, theres no limit to how many times you can take a quote for a spin. Although you might begin to annoy your friends.

Why do we quote? For Emerson, who supplied the epigraph above, quoting is just a clever way to get out of saying something new yourself. But its also true that an existing quote is often the best way of expressing a truth. Can anyone really improve on the saying popularized by Benjamin Franklin, Time is money? (Go ahead. Try.) Quotations are also comforting. Their familiarity reassures us. How do people go to sleep? Dorothy Parker once mused.

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profoundif I can remember any of the damn things. Of course, theres also aesthetic pleasure. Quotes might ring with truth or sizzle with ironythe ancient Greek maxim Know thyself versus Oscar Wildes Only the shallow know themselves. Sometimes quotes carry unexpected poetry, as in George S. Pattons A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood. Other times their clumsiness is endearing, as when George W.

Bush intoned: They misunderestimated me. But the crucial point about quotationsand one frequently overlookedis that someone really said them. Often its not just the words themselves that are special, but the speaker. Happy Birthday, Mr. President, might be a banal sentiment, but not when it is seductively cooed by Marilyn Monroe. And as English actor Kenneth Williams once remarked, quotes give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator, which is often socially impressive.

Yet here in the authorship department, we humans dont always do so hot. People are more likely to remember a pithy line than who actually said it. So the quote gravitates toward another big name, and, like it or not, that person gets attribution. Thus our old friend Emerson is now widely credited with the saw: The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. Yet it was Roman philosopher Seneca who originally uttered it. Go figure.

The internet, in typical fashion, has made the problem of misattribution both more tractable and vastly worse. Boundless resources exist to help verify quotes. Yet if were honest, most people dont give a rip. Memorable lines tumble around on blogs and social media until, say, Taylor Swift winds up being credited for quotes belonging to Adolf Hitler. (Yes, this really happened.) The point of this book is simple: For the most part, you just match the quotation with the person quoted. But first, lets be real about the difficulty here.

Its possible that the person reading this right now is about as familiar with quotations as baseball great Joe DiMaggio was as a young man: I can remember a reporter asking for a quote, and I didnt know what a quote was, DiMaggio recalled. I thought it was some kind of a soft drink. If this is you, have no fear! Most of the names in this book are quite famous. Educated guesses can get you pretty far. Regardless, the quotes are fun on their own, whether you care about guessing or not. On the other hand, you may be a certified quote freak.

You might take after Winston Churchilla quote magnet himselfwho once said: Bartletts Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. Not only do you know that John Lennon didnt come up with Life is what happens to you while youre busy making other plans, but you know the name of the obscure cartoonist who did. If you salivate at the thought of correctly identifying a maxim of Benjamin Disraelis, this book is your rare opportunity to feel cool. But odds are you fall somewhere between novice and freak. You dont sit around all day memorizing passages from Paradise Lost, but neither are you baffled by the most famous expressions (think To be, or not to be). You are what we might call a regular person.

For you, this book could be challenging at times, but fun throughout. Plus, no ones keeping scorethough weve included a three-point difficulty scale to keep things interesting. On that point, a quick piece of advice: Rather than try for the nine-in-ten were taught earns you an A, itd be better to treat each quote like an at-bat in baseball, where three-in-ten is admirable. As Hall of Famer Ted Williams wrote: A .300 hitter, that rarest of breeds these days, goes through life with the certainty that he will fail at his job seven out of ten times. Yep, thats the spirit. The book is laid out as follows.

Seven thematic sections correspond to some of the major stages and preoccupations of life: Growing Up; Love & Marriage; Work & Money; Politics & War; Motivation; Aging; and Wisdom & Miscellany. There are thirty quotes per category, each with four answer choices listed. Interspersed between these sections are mini-games to spice things up. Finish the Quote asks the reader to do just thatpick the right ending for each one. In Out of Context, the reader guesses what was going on when a quote was spoken. In Reverso!, the reader is given a name and must choose which of the quotes the speaker actually saidor vice versa.

In The Scuttlebutt, each quote is about someone who remains unnamed; the task is to find out who that someone is. In isms, the reader is given a list of quotes from a speaker renowned for their unique phraseology, such as Mark Twain or Dolly Parton; four are genuine, four incorrect. Finally, Head-to-Head presents eight real quotes and two notable figures who might have said them; the goal is to match the quotes correctly. OK, thats it. Have fun, and remember : Its just a game. Life goes on.

Then again, as author Jorge Luis Borges once said: Life itself is a quotation.

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself? Patti Smith Difficulty Level Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. Its hot in the summer and cold in the winter.... Theres only one rule that I know of, babiesGod damn it, youve got to be kind. a Kurt Vonnegut b Dr.

Benjamin Spock c Fred Rogers d Hippocrates The so-called Golden Ruletreat others as youd like to be treatedis present in virtually every major belief system. In Taoism, one is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind. In Christianity: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

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