The Bitter Truth Trivia Quiz

Answer: A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips

Something seems to happen when you reach the age of forty. Before that age you could eat what you liked and never gain a pound. After forty even looking at a cream cake puts two inches on your hips. Obviously this is something to do with your metabolism slowing down as you reach middle age. So be warned all you stick thin youngsters, your mother is right, it will happen to you.

Answer: Fair weather friends

The term "fair weather friends" refers to those people who are happy to be around when times are good, but as soon as you need help, be it money or a shoulder to cry on, they are nowhere to be seen. Often these are the very same people who expect you to be there when they have problems they need help with.

Answer: An act of kindness can have bad consequences

This saying refers to the times that you go out of your way to help someone, only to have the deed backfire on you. You lend a friend money and never get repaid. You listen to your friend's problems and help where you can, only for him or her to resent the fact that you now know their life is not perfect.
Despite this people continue to do acts of kindness for others, and I like to think that more of these are rewarded than punished.

Answer: Heading south for the winter

Regrettably, as we age our skin and other parts of our body lose the elasticity of youth. Wrinkles develop, your face seems to slip downwards into jowls, and, especially in women, breasts need more support to prevent a droopy look. Short of plastic surgery little can be done about this, but enjoy your wrinkles, you have earned every single one of them.

Answer: Bernard Madoff

In 2008 Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged with securities fraud. He had been running one of the largest Ponzi schemes ever seen. His "investors" lost around $65 billion in total. Named after Charles Ponzi, who ran the first known example, these schemes rely on greed. People are tempted by the promise of large returns on their investment. No actual investment is ever made. New money pays dividends to earlier investors, and eventually the whole scheme collapses, either through lack of new money, or because the perpetrator has disappeared with all the funds.

Cynthia Payne was an English madam who offered sex for luncheon vouchers; A.J. Raffles and Arsene Lupin were both famous gentlemen jewel thieves.

Answer: You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear

In other words, you can't make something good from inferior materials. Sometimes you can't change a situation from a bad one to a good one either. You just have to learn to accept what you have and make the best of it. After all, better to have an inferior purse than no purse at all. Although I'm not sure that this applies to handbags.

Answer: The richest man in the graveyard

The truth is that some people get so fixated on not spending money that they deny themselves even basic needs like adequate food and heat. They count their money in the bank and it becomes the most important thing in their lives. They hoard every penny and often die in apparent poverty when in fact they have millions in the bank.

Answer: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong

If it can go wrong it will is a law that could have been invented for modern technology. As soon as you decide to join the technological revolution and become reliant on your computer, smart phone, ipod etc. you can almost guarantee it will cease working. No-one is sure of the exact origins of the saying.

It seems to date back to around the 1940s and the difficulties experienced in using some new measuring devices designed by a Mr. Murphy.

Answer: You can't judge a book by looking at the cover

As you can't judge a book by the cover so you can't judge people by the way they look. Someone who looks scruffy and down at heel could be a millionaire. The man on the train next to you who looks rather vacant and who mutters to himself a lot could be a genius working out a complicated equation in his head.

Answer: Benjamin Franklin

This is a rather gloomy view of the world, but there is a certain truth in it. Nothing in life is absolutely certain except that we will die, and before we die a goodly part of our money will go to whichever Government is in power.
Mind you, if everything else in life was as certain as those two things then it might turn out to be rather boring.